tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62485632034172052862018-03-06T01:49:00.679-08:00True ExpressionsFinding truth through evidence, reason, and compassion; expressing that truth as I understand it, fearlessly and honestly. Kalenoreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248563203417205286.post-4169367686575780702015-09-23T07:19:00.001-07:002015-09-23T08:00:19.281-07:00RAPE DEFENDERS! - Awful Men Commenting on Rape - VERY TRIGGERING<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-t-RRG5Pi2CU/VgK-ftpvdyI/AAAAAAAAAEQ/O0z-j-H2lZM/s640/blogger-image-654889695.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-t-RRG5Pi2CU/VgK-ftpvdyI/AAAAAAAAAEQ/O0z-j-H2lZM/s640/blogger-image-654889695.jpg"></a></div></div><div><br></div>Whenever I read an article about rape, I notice that the comments are full of angry men (and some women) lashing out at rape victims and those who support victims and oppose rape. &amp; it really isn't surprising, because about 300 thousand people get sexually assaulted every year just in the U.S. according to the Department of Justice (via RAINN.org). There are less rapists than victims, but that is still hundreds of thousands of rapists. &nbsp;Because of (mostly) men who dominate comments sections like this, many mainstream news sources are dominated by awful comments, as rational, compassionate people wisely choose not to look at the comments at all. However, I think we need to face what a significant portion of people truly believe when it comes to rape.<div><br></div><div>Here is a rundown of the sorts of comments you see:</div><div>- Rape jokes</div><div>- Stop talking about rape, what about FALSE rape accusations!&nbsp;</div><div>- Oh, so now you are calling men looking at women rape?!</div><div>- Women lie about rape!</div><div>- Being drunk and regretting it isnt rape!</div><div>- Feminists lie about rape!</div><div>- Liberals lie about rape!</div><div>- People are profiting off lies about rape!</div><div>- These people are not real victims and this article is an insult to real victims!</div><div>- Slurs/insults like: bitch, retard, cunt, twat, feminazi, variations on idiot, other general name-calling</div><div>- Telling anyone who expresses support for rape victims or dissent that they are a bad person in some way</div><div>- Men get raped too!</div><div>- "Debunking" the story</div><div>- blaming the victim</div><div>- relentless 'debating" with someone who has asked them to stop, even after being asked to stop or ignored</div><div>- invoking rookie-level debate club terms like ad hominem and "logic", right after calling someone a retard</div><div><br></div><div>So I'm going to start by addressing the LEAST aggregious of these problems, because most rational, compassionate people can easily see the problems with most of these behaviors. &nbsp;To me, the least bad thing here is bringing up male victims, but I will get back to that one; the second least worse imho is the "debunking" crowd, assuming they didn't engage in any of the other behaviors which is rarely the case. I think it's fine to point out errors in an article, study, argument, whatever, and even if you pointing out those errors doesn't seem like the best way to be an ally, it is better to have the correct information and that can only happen when people are willing to correct wrong info. &nbsp;So let's assume that you see a "debunk" comment that isn't full of insults and inaccuracies, that even (as they rarely do) takes a moment to acknowledge that rape is a problem - what's so bad about that?</div><div>Well of course, the primary issue I have is that these posters rarely DO take a breath to acknowledge any sympathy for rape victims and often do start by name-calling and often cite untrustworthy sources, a misinterpretation, or are simply incorrect. &nbsp; But that all aside, the main problem I have with this behavior is that these people seem to think, like a Creationist trying to "debunk" evolultion or a Holocaust Denier, that if they can find ONE discrepency that merits the silencing of anti-rape activism and we can all go back to pretending rape doesn't exist. &nbsp;Instead of reading the article and thinking about it, they are immediately jumping to a "yeah, but-!" position, immediately googling furiously and copy-pasteing an article that often has more nuance than the commenter realizes, in an attempt to "disprove" the stories of rape victims and thus urge people to ignore them. It's also a &nbsp;problem that these debunkers think they are being rebellious when in fact MOST articles about rape are full of comments like these, and ignoring and minimizing rape is the norm, just like how racists think it is rebellious to call black murder victims "thugs". It's a "truther" mentality, and it makes people focus on correcting the debunking instead of experiencing the emotionality of how terrible rape really is.</div><div><br></div><div>So what about those male rape victims? &nbsp;Well, let me say that I am known in the internet wilds for being a hard-core, unrelenting, revolutionary, cunt-wielding patriarchy-smashing feminasti, as you can tell from my general writing. &nbsp;However, believe it or not, like many feminists I (*gasp!*) have criticisms of feminism and feminists. &nbsp;Like racism for example. &nbsp;And leaving men who are hurt by patriarchy behind is a major problem to me. &nbsp;Feminists do a lot to help male victims, such as being the people who made raping a man illegal, but we need to do more, because MRAs certainly aren't going to help, they're too busy harassing female rape victims. Male rape victims get left out by the mainstream media way too much and it sucks. So having said that, why am I sick of seeing men commenting "what about male victims?" on articles about rape? &nbsp;Well, if I am dying of cancer and my mom comes to visit me, would it really be OK for my brother to come into my room and demand she leave immediately to talk about his AIDS instead? Or would it be more appropriate for him to join her in visiting me, and then to ask that she help care for him next? That may be a clumsy metaphor, so let me say it straight: When people are talking about female victims, we should be showing support for those women. When people talk about male victims, I dont see women saying "women get raped too!", &nbsp;I see them supporting those men. Also, a lot of these comments arent really about supporting men at all, they are about shutting down women.</div><div><br></div><div>Now, let's say at this point you think I'm totally wrong about these two things, which I will grant is not unreasonable. &nbsp;You are saying I am over reacting. Perhaps so. It's an easy thing to do when rape has hurt people you love. &nbsp;However, I think it is incredibly irrational to defend all the other types of heinous comments people leave. &nbsp;Angry (mostly) men responding to a story about rape by calling the victims liars, for example. &nbsp;Oh, sure, it might seem to an uneducated person on a single article about, say, Cosby, that these people are simply expressing a difference of opinion. &nbsp;but if you start reading comments about ANY rape victim, over and over again, you will see the same claims.</div><div><br></div><div>A popular claim is that women who have been raped were simply drunk and willing. I think this comes from the assumption that a barely-concious female body you are using to pleasure yourself with is not resisting, and maybe you are drunk also, so therefore it was willing. The idea that women simply decide after sex that it was a rape should be ridiculous on its' face but somehow people dont question it. &nbsp;But THINK, dammit, WHY would women do this? IF they had sex and they enjoyed that sex shouldn't they be happy? If rape victims get so much abuse that some rape victims literally commit suicide due to bullying, and comments sections are full of people calling them liars, and there is no monetary value to an accusation, what's to be gained? &nbsp;IF women are constantly falsely accusing, why is it that EVERYONE agrees that most victims never even report rape? &nbsp;Why is it that in our personal lives we know women who tell you about a rape and don't even quite see it as a rape (for example, I know more than three women who said a man held them down and forced himself on them and didn't think it was rape even though they did feel scared. This thinking in victims is sadly most common with child victims because for obvious reasons they aren't taught about sex, consent and assault at all before being assaulted).&nbsp;</div><div>The "she lies!" myth is inherently ironic because it presumes that we should assume a woman is lying without any actual proof that she is lying. &nbsp;I hope I don't need to explain how that is hypocritical to you. In this view, rape victims are guily EVEN WHEN proven innocent - people are STILL calling vindicated victims like the - idk 40, 50? - Cosby accusers liars. Victims whose rapes were captured on film are called liars. Victims whose rapists were actually convicted are called liars.</div><div>Another thing these Rape Defenders commonly do is pretend that their position is the LOGIC! one. &nbsp;This is really common with men trying to shut women up. They will say that whoever is talking to them is "relying only on emotion", even when she cites studies and is very calm, even when HE is angrily name calling and making false, unsubstantiated claim. &nbsp;The hypocrtical irony HERE is that the entire reason people rape and defend rapists is emotional! They want power, they are angry, reading about rape makes them feel bad, so they defensively attack the article, the victim, the victim's supporters. It's also incredibly fucked up to expect people to not have emotions about rape, hopefully feeling sad and angry that rape occurs. We all SHOULD be feeling emotional about this.</div><div>Below are some screen shots of some of the stuff men said about rape that fit with the examples I've given of shitty behavior. These are all from one thread. I may add more photos to this same post in future. I believe many of these men are rapists themselves. Obviously this portion is extremely triggering.&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">'m sorry I didn't devote any time to transcribing this for people who can't see images, if you would like a transcription let me know in the comments.&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Until next time, take care of each other and support victims, not rapists.&nbsp;</span></div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-6JSIiq2Zgd8/VgK3-lhn-2I/AAAAAAAAACY/3_u2cZ7ZLRQ/s640/blogger-image-1190482180.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-6JSIiq2Zgd8/VgK3-lhn-2I/AAAAAAAAACY/3_u2cZ7ZLRQ/s640/blogger-image-1190482180.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">this is one of the few comments that FB has actually removed.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-AOSqjBFhDu8/VgK8tRuztQI/AAAAAAAAADQ/cuVhZwHGeu0/s640/blogger-image-966903360.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-AOSqjBFhDu8/VgK8tRuztQI/AAAAAAAAADQ/cuVhZwHGeu0/s640/blogger-image-966903360.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">the article &amp; highest rated comment. MRAs often send people to a comments section to flood it with bullshit, but this site, Vice, has a lot of asshole readers for whatever reason.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Vorp8pkxMvI/VgK8wFVmilI/AAAAAAAAAD4/80q7x4gccD4/s640/blogger-image-96209784.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Vorp8pkxMvI/VgK8wFVmilI/AAAAAAAAAD4/80q7x4gccD4/s640/blogger-image-96209784.jpg"></a></div>"White Knight" is an MRA concept - a man who defends women to get into their pants.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-xXLfdmiMkzo/VgK8uaMAEYI/AAAAAAAAADg/Rw7A40XMo4E/s640/blogger-image-1182853527.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-xXLfdmiMkzo/VgK8uaMAEYI/AAAAAAAAADg/Rw7A40XMo4E/s640/blogger-image-1182853527.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">this is an example of a relentless commenter who "debates" someone who has told him to go the fuck away. Note the stereotyping. My majors have been in Creative Writing and my medical field career.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-GamWcrgZJ-M/VgK8nbiRKCI/AAAAAAAAACs/Jt30FEnLNbU/s640/blogger-image--2070796623.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-GamWcrgZJ-M/VgK8nbiRKCI/AAAAAAAAACs/Jt30FEnLNbU/s640/blogger-image--2070796623.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I apologize to people with an illness for using language that equates bigotry to illness.</div><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8sLGBa7rWWY/VgK8sfuSjDI/AAAAAAAAADA/7GNWZ1pleEM/s640/blogger-image-1785432219.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8sLGBa7rWWY/VgK8sfuSjDI/AAAAAAAAADA/7GNWZ1pleEM/s640/blogger-image-1785432219.jpg"></a></div>Another relentless commenter&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-zBxxGkCu-MA/VgK3_BvQikI/AAAAAAAAACc/uHRt_3im7Ok/s640/blogger-image--380379282.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-zBxxGkCu-MA/VgK3_BvQikI/AAAAAAAAACc/uHRt_3im7Ok/s640/blogger-image--380379282.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">the Bush comment is a running 9/11 "joke"</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-JE7wq8glYxM/VgK8n9ByyDI/AAAAAAAAACw/t6SBWa_Oejk/s640/blogger-image-1094737223.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-JE7wq8glYxM/VgK8n9ByyDI/AAAAAAAAACw/t6SBWa_Oejk/s640/blogger-image-1094737223.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">IF I recall correctly Revenge of the Nerds did have a rape scene in it, ironically - a man put on a mask and pretended to be a woman's boyfriend. Rape of a woman as revenge on a man. Incidentally, I think Joel's joke is kind of funny and not that awful tbh but I might go to Feminist Hell for even thinking that.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-atmu_PHhJGU/VgK8rrp8hDI/AAAAAAAAAC8/GTIiKm9rVZ4/s640/blogger-image-977146850.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-atmu_PHhJGU/VgK8rrp8hDI/AAAAAAAAAC8/GTIiKm9rVZ4/s640/blogger-image-977146850.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Denial</div><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-pR3jFxujb8s/VgK8wmtuFTI/AAAAAAAAAEA/FacuHqgpd7o/s640/blogger-image-345179409.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-pR3jFxujb8s/VgK8wmtuFTI/AAAAAAAAAEA/FacuHqgpd7o/s640/blogger-image-345179409.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-1VikI_G1F5s/VgK8vu5ptXI/AAAAAAAAADw/6gByeD4ZFqY/s640/blogger-image-1497487846.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-1VikI_G1F5s/VgK8vu5ptXI/AAAAAAAAADw/6gByeD4ZFqY/s640/blogger-image-1497487846.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">saying rape is based on how conventionally attractive someone is, even though men and children and the elderly and the dsabled (no I am not saying old and disabled people are unattractive, just not by conventional stndards) and overweight people and all sorts of people are victims, and it really isnt about attraction for at least a significant percentage of rapists.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-I85GVIZQvMw/VgK8vLwa_QI/AAAAAAAAADo/-23IcDD2Bk4/s640/blogger-image-1950922587.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font color="#000000"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-I85GVIZQvMw/VgK8vLwa_QI/AAAAAAAAADo/-23IcDD2Bk4/s640/blogger-image-1950922587.jpg"></font></a></div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Women offering a much-needed dose of reality. THANKS SISTERS!</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I</span></div></div><br></div>Kalenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248563203417205286.post-12816068648489471342015-09-09T09:19:00.001-07:002015-09-18T19:00:26.282-07:00Dear Fat Shamers: Get the Fucking Fat Facts!I recently watched a viral video (Im not gonna bother to mention which unless requested) featuring a "funny" "comedian" making the easiest and laziest and oldest "joke" in the book - which boils down to "Fatty fat fat fat! Ha Ha!" &nbsp;&amp; Im fucking sick of it.<br><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Seriously, at one point in the video she literally tells fat people to "STOP EATING".&nbsp;</span></div><div><div><div><br></div><div>Like a lot of "fatties", I literally did make an attempt to completely stop eating. The results weren't pretty. Turns out, we need food to survive. &nbsp;Without it, you get dizzy and tired and just generally make yourself sick. &nbsp;As much as you might assume (and it is an assumption, a wrong one) that fat people are unhealthy, starving is the exact opposite of healthy. Starvation can cause serious problems, such as death. Your body can't just live off stored fat, it doesn't carry enough nutrients to properly fuel all your moving parts day by day.</div><div><br></div><div>Now I'm only a beginning bio student, so take what I write here with a grain of salt and do your own research, but I sure as hell am coming from a more scientific perspective than "JUST STOP EATING!!1!" lady, and I will be providing some actual citations. I know "jokes" are often given the excuse of not having to be factual, but when your "comedy" is really bullying and when it pretends to come from a "health" perspective, it needs a serious fact check.</div><div><br></div><div>When you starve, your body has to break down muscles for glucose and protein because it cannot get that from stored fat. Starvation has an effect on your organs, because the body doesn't just "eat" from your stomach fat but scary stuff like "atrophy of the heart" starts to occur, because your body doesn't recognize cardiac muscle as seperate. &nbsp;People die when their organs begin to shut down. &nbsp;You can starve to death and still appear "obese" because your body will start cannibalizing your muscles and organs at the same time it is drawing from stored fat. An obese person could starve to death just as fast as a thin person. The average person can survive about 21 days without food (NOT that long without water though) and so far I have been unable to find any data suggesting that overweight people could survive for longer, or much data about overweight people and starvation in general. &nbsp;I did find several completely impossible and irresponsible claims, and lots of people online asking the question and making assumptions. &nbsp;One man even claimed he hadn't eaten in a year! Not possible. Yet wierdly even that ficticious story included passages about liver damage and other common side effects of not eating.</div><div><br></div><div>I also found a lot of health experts debunking fat-phobic mythology online, thankfully. One common piece of advice (ie on WebMD) is that diets too low in calories aren't as effective long-term as more moderate caloric intake, and could even be dangerous. So even getting close to starvation IS NOT SAFE, yes even for those sub-human, ugly fatties. &nbsp;In the video, Ms. Concern Troll says over and over that she wants fat people to stay alive. Telling fat people to starve themselves will literally kill fat people (even without mentioning issues like suicide). So if you actually want us to live, fucking stop it with that shit.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>There are scientific studies and data that suggests that overweight people tend to actually be HEALTHIER than average weight to underweight people, particularly the latter, which should be obvious - having an extra store of fat is better than literally not having enough nutrients to fuel your body to the point where the body has to start eating away at your heart muscle. Not only are fat people not "killing themselves" by merely being fat, but they are actually LESS LIKELY TO DIE than skinnier people! <a href="http://healthland.time.com/2013/01/02/being-overweight-is-linked-to-lower-risk-of-mortality/"> healthland.time.com/2013/01/02/being-overweight-is-linked-to-lower-risk-of-mortality/</a>. So maybe we should start mercilessly mocking thin people and pressuring them to eat more ice cream, because "we dont want them to die"?</div><div><br></div><div>A lot of "common knowledge" about weight is actually just common bullshit. The BMI, for example, has been repeatedly called out by researchers as totally fucking bogus, as it doesnt take into account things like muscle mass and bone density, and would thus falsely label very fit, muscular people like Brad Pitt as "overweight". BMI is not even a good indication of how much fat a person has on their body, much less their overall health. <a href="http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265215.php">www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265215.php</a>)</div><div><br></div><div>The shitty fat-hating video is almost entirely (at least pretending to be) based on the assumption that mockery and shame will encourage fat people to lose weight. &nbsp;However, at least one recent study (http://www.livescience.com/47787-fat-shaming-weight-gain.html) has shown otherwise; shaming fat people actually can cause them to GAIN weight. &nbsp;People who feel ashamed of their bodies and hate themselves are not going to have a positive attitude towards things like exercise, people full of negative emotions are not going to be able to pass up a cookie as easily.</div><div><br></div><div>Body positivity, on the other hand, invites the fat girls to dance at the club without fear of mockery, and in so doing, allows us more opportunities to stay active.</div><div><br></div><div>In one part of the video, she says that she wishes she could eat whatever she wants, implying fat people just eat whatever we want. &nbsp;THAT fuckin shit made me laugh out loud, bitterly, both middle fingers raised high.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>As a fatty, I have had to be FAR more conservative in my eating habits than the people around me. People who don't gain fat as easily simply do not have to take as much care to avoid certain foods as I do. I watch thinner people around me eating fattening things like white pasta while they make fun of me for eating big bowls of lightly seasoned spinach. &nbsp;I say no to ice cream outings when skinny people don't have to even worry about that. I watched my chronically-UNDERweight sister eating Burger King on a twice daily basis at a time when trying my best to eat almost nothing every day and even forcing myself to throw up healthy foods like salad out of guilt and self hate only got me down to 150 pounds, still looking chubby. Skinnier people who eat a hamburger are encouraged whilst I can't even eat a piece of bread without someone commenting on how "concerned" they are about my body (yes, I get shit no matter what I eat or dont eat!). &nbsp;Anyone who hasn't lived a life as a fat person, especially as (seen by society as) female, really can't fully understand what it is like to be so constantly food-policed. It doesn't help! &nbsp;Obsessing over food only leads to more obsessing over food! Just as starving can actually slow down weight loss.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>Fat shaming me, Just as people giving me shit for smoking cigarettes, or for not shaving my legs, doesnt help me. It just made me feel bad! &amp; it didn't help me quit smoking or convince me that body hair on (assigned) females was EeeeeVIiiiilLLLLL! I could also throw in things I've been shamed about like being vegetarian (I'm not anymore, but not because of shamers) or being queer (I chose Pride). You get the idea. Whether a behavior or state of being is legit bad for you (smoking) or totally awesome (queerness), bullying DOESNT FUCKING HELP.</div><div><br></div><div>When you see someone who is fat, you don't know whether they&nbsp;</div><div>- have a medical condition that causes them to gain weight</div><div>- have asthma or otherwise cant exercise very well to lose weight</div><div>- just lost 100 pounds</div><div>- work out daily, diet, and are committed to slowly and healthily getting in shape</div><div>- tend to eat very healthfully naturally&nbsp;</div><div>- maybe just dont have a lot of time to worry about their body between the kids and the job</div><div>- just had a baby</div><div>- have recovered from an eating disorder</div><div>- are suffering from depression that includes self-hatred and dont need your shit&nbsp;</div><div>- or hey, maybe they just like to eat what the fuck they want and don't give a fuck and didn't ask for your fucking opinion, bitch.</div><div><br></div><div>And EVERY fat person already knows they're fat, thanks.</div><div><br></div><div>So spare me your "concern". You don't know me. My body is awesome and it is none of your damn business.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></div>Kalenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248563203417205286.post-42739742898844379932015-09-03T13:37:00.001-07:002015-11-09T09:13:32.371-08:00Eeeeviiiiil Femisms vs. Actual Real Feminism<div><br></div><div>OK, let's look at the actions feminists have achieved/are working on:</div><div>- Legalized Female Vote (a right men already had)</div><div>- Legalized female property ownership (a right men already had)</div><div>- Successfully allowed women to attend school from primary education to college (a right males already had)</div><div>- Changed the legal definition of rape to include more victims including men (giving more protection to men and women)</div><div>- Opened up the job market to give women equal OPPORTUNITY, continues to push for more job inclusion of women (a right men already had)</div><div>- fighting for women to not be paid less just because they are women.</div><div>- Fighting against victim-blaming in rape and abuse cases, including for children and men.</div><div>- worked and working in solidarity with the LGBT movement</div><div>- Questioning gender norms so that everyone can do whatever they want regardless of gender (benefits everyone)</div><div>- increasingly working in solidarity with anti-racist movements under concept of intersectionality.</div><div><br></div><div>Now lets look at anti-feminist claims:</div><div>- BUT CIRCUMCISION!! - not invented by feminists, not endorsed by feminists, many feminists are active intactivists, and the feminist concept of bodily autonomy helped launch the modern intactivist movement</div><div>- BUT DIVORCE COURT! CHILD CUSTODY! Most judges are still men, as are most law makers. Feminism opposes the idea that men are naturally bad at taking care of kids.</div><div>BUT NOT ALL MEN! the feminist idea of holding rapists accountable for rape comes from the idea that men are adults who can control themselves.</div><div>BUT I PAID FOR DINNER! the feminist push for equal pay and job opportunities means we do not want men to have to pay for dinner.</div><div><br></div><div>Basically, the things that men have against feminism tend to be things that are actually promoted by sexism.</div><div><br></div><div>I'm not sure how to insult this new anti-feminist hate group nonsense appropriately because calling it a sickness is an insult to the sick, calling it insane insults the insane (which is a very real issue, actually, because being mentally ill is not the same as being irrational, bigoted, etc and mental illness stigma really sucks), calling it stupid is an insult to all the good people who aren't the sharpest knife in the drawer due to no fault of their own, calling it shit is an insult to our body's useful waste disposal process, etc. etc. Maybe we could start insulting people by comparing them to bigots because there are few things worse in the world than mindless hate.</div>Kalenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248563203417205286.post-38525014316475783122015-08-29T00:08:00.001-07:002015-08-29T09:56:10.933-07:00The Nazis Hated Feminism<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-rKFtUZmdZdE/VeFcG7Z4ZyI/AAAAAAAAABs/2viUcvrO__M/s640/blogger-image--1624900305.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><img border="0" src="http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-rKFtUZmdZdE/VeFcG7Z4ZyI/AAAAAAAAABs/2viUcvrO__M/s640/blogger-image--1624900305.jpg"><br><br></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In 1934, Hitler proclaimed, "[Woman's] world is her husband, her family, her children, her house.</span></div>A popular way to insult women who want to be treated equally (ie not be harassed just for being women) these days is to call them FemiNazis. The term was invented by that bastion of wit and wisdom, Rush Limbaugh, in the 90s and has since been popularized by the hate groups who terrorize women online wvery time they open their mouths to say anything suggesting sexism might exist and might be bad. The term is ironic in displaying the speaker's ignorance of basic history, which is a cornerstone of sexist thinking in an time when even women who were alive back when women were barred from most careers and had only had the vote in the U.S. for 50 years support men like Paul Elam who make using men to hurt women a full-time career. I thought it might be interesting to examime the ways in which the Nazis were anti-feminist. My research is cursory, gleaned from secondary online sources like encyclopedias, and should thus be taken with a grain of salt and confirmed via direct primary sourcing for any serious scholarship, nonetheless, I am fairly confident it is generally accurate as the primary sources quoted included scholarly words, records, and other source-able material, and as it is logically consistent.<br><div><br><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Nazism's central figure, Hitler himself, was an abuser of at least one woman in early life; he had a nonconsensual romantic obsession with his own (half-)niece, Geli Raubal, made her his housekeeper at 17, disallowed her to have consensual romantic relationships, abused and controlled her, probably sexually abused her in some manner, made her his prisoner, and finally drove her to suicide in 1931, out of despair because she could not pursue her dreams of singing, the man she loved, and was trapped with her a usive uncle who I think we all know was not a nice man. The Nazi party swept it under the rug in a typical example of a society that protected men who abused women.&nbsp;</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">In an equal society, a woman would have more freedom, she would not be so easily controlled by a man. Her only hope of escape was marriage, and only if her uncle allowed it. Hitler clearly did not WANT this woman to have freedom and did not respect her feelings, seeing her as an object for him to control, an attitude that he would extend to millions of other people.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Furthermore, if the Nazis were feminist, surely they would not allow a woman-abuser to become their leader, right? Of course, if the Nazis were feminist, they probably would have had at least half their leaders be women. This is just the sort of thing sexist men take for granted - that in an equal society, half of leaders would be female, not 100% or so of them male.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Hitler is frequently quoted, from Mein Kampf and his speeches, talking about how women's role should be confined to motherhood. I'm not completely sure of the accuracy of quotes I found secondhand and in English, but given what we know about his actions we can determine such quotes to be in line with his thinking. In Mein Kampf, he says the primary aim of female education is for motherhood. He also said "A woman's world is her husband, her family, her children, her home, We do not find it right when she presses her way into the world of men."</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">His opposition to Communism, which promoted equality for women, is reflected in this quote:&nbsp;</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"The granting of equal rights to women, which Marxism demands...draws women into realms of society in which they are inferior."</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">This creepy quote makes a lot of sense given how he tortued his niece:</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"A lass of 18 or 20 years is as pliable as wax. It must be possible for a man to impose his will on any girl. Indeed, a woman wants nothing else" - speech to Hitler Youth.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">In my research, I found quite a few anti-feminist sites trying to put obviously fake pro-feminism quotes in Hitler's mouth, possibly as a joke, as if to say that if Hitler supported feminism, therefore it must be wrong, Aside from the fact that these quotes contradict his actions and other words he really did write and speak, if Hitler said the sky was blue that doesnt mean it is truly pink just because he was a bad man; it is simply bad logic. Likewise, feminism isnt good because Hitler opposed it, it is good for a variety of reasons that I think are frankly obvious but perhaps an article for another time anyway.&nbsp;</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">As one example, one of the fake sites pretends Hitler was pro-abortion, which is only true when apploed to "inferior" people, but not as a support of women's autonomy; in actuality the Third Reiche not only made abortion illegal but imposed harsh penalties for it (and banned contraception) - for normative Aryan women, of course; for Jewish women it was encouraged or even forced. Mere discussion of contraception, even for the oppressed groups (why bother when they were to be killed, I guess) was illegal. While millions of Jewish and other targeted ethnic groups' children were mercilessly murdered, Aryan women were encouraged to have four or more children with Aryan men and discouraged from being single or having abortions. I mean, that just makes logical sense given Hitler's general game plan - if your goal is to have a particular race dominate, it just doesnt make sense to allow women reproductive freedom and thus allow Aryan children to not be born. At the same time, it is well-documented that the Nazis murdered homosexual and disabled people for similar reasons- their goal being to literally murder everyone who didnt fit their narrow idea of superiority.&nbsp;</span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">It is a strange idea that such a regime would view women as equals. Hitler glorified mothers but hated working, single women; single women were "staatsangehoringer", state property. Professional women were increasingly fired under Nazism. After 1936, women could no longer hold many jobs, particularly in leadership such as judges, not even as teachers or nurses. Feminization and modesty were stressed and even legally enforced.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Despite this, Aryan German/French/Polish etc women resisted in a variety of ways and were eventually needed, and even forced into, labor and military service, proving once again just how flawed this sexist ideology can be. While some women resisted sexism by becoming Nazi leaders, others resisted sexism and Nazism by becoming resistance leaders. &nbsp;Because of course &nbsp;the oppression of normative Aryan women is nothing in comparisom to the oppressed classes who were marked for torture and death.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Girls and Women who were Jewish, Roma, disabled, and otherwise deemed inferior were brutalized in specifically gendered ways in the Death Camps. Little girls are known to have been raped by S.S. officers, and females in general were often raped and beaten. There were at least 500 rape brothels run by the Nazis. Pregnant women were forced to have abortions or killed. Women were tortured in "experiments" and sterilized. Women could be forced to work or killed when seen as not strong enough to work. Women in camps worked together to survive and resist.</span></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Women and girls were a key part of the resistance, even militarily. Women from many narions were eventually an importsnt part of the war effort. One well known girl was Sophie Scholl, a student who was executed as part of the White Rose French-Jewish resistace for no more than passing out fliers. Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore were gender-bending lesbians who used art to spread a message of resistance, decided to face death rather than give in, and ultimately died from prison conditions shortly after they were freed. And of course, Anne Frank is a very well-known victim of the Holocaust who still inspires us with her inner strength.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">So the next time someone calls a woman a "feminazi", just remind them that it is people who want to force women into an inferior role and protect people who abuse women who are truly like Nazis, and it is women whi dare to resist who are the true heroes.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">pictured: female resistance members</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"></span><br><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-39D_ehxZUA4/VeFccmQtpWI/AAAAAAAAAB0/a8YzokvFPeY/s640/blogger-image-2088492773.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-39D_ehxZUA4/VeFccmQtpWI/AAAAAAAAAB0/a8YzokvFPeY/s640/blogger-image-2088492773.jpg"></a></span></div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></span></div></div><br><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div>Kalenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248563203417205286.post-80854719051896704092015-08-24T17:52:00.001-07:002015-08-24T17:52:13.826-07:00IT Is Blatantly Obvious That Sexism Definitely Still Exists<div>*Strong Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault (I'll put stars** around the worst parts so you can read the piece but avoid those parts)</div><div><br></div>I've been noticing a rather bizarre trend on teh interwebz in recent years; people, men and women ranging from teens to elderly men who should know better, who either pretend that sexism no longer exists, that it never existed, or that men are and have long been oppressed by women. &nbsp;<div>I find this exceedingly baffling. &nbsp;I mean, when I was 11 grown men used to hit on me in really disgusting ways - like masturbating at me, following me in a car. Does that happen to 11 year old boys? &nbsp;Some people who I have mentioned this to either acted like they were shocked it happened or like it was no big deal ("you had tits, of course men harassed you." I was still only an eleven year old child with no sexual interests whatsoever). 1Those people were men. The women I mentioned it to had all had similar experiences. &nbsp;Now, maybe not all women experience these sorts of things, but the YesAllWomen (experience harassment and sexism) hashtag was immensely popular precisely because MOST, and yea I'll go ahead and say probably all women do experience sexism, although a very small minority of women who tend to spend a lot of time hating on other women deny this.</div><div><br></div><div>*** &amp; That's considered minor league stuff. I am considered lucky. I know several women who have been raped, some of them multiple times, and most of them were either blamed for their rape, told they were lying, in denial that it was rape (to any man daring to suggest that this doubt means it was not rape, ask yourself if someone holding an object over your face and penetrating you against your will in a manner that causes damage to your body sounds like fun; these are the types of situations women are not immediately recognizing as violence) or all of that; I also know a few men who have been raped and live with the added stigma of rape being a crime that is only suppose to be committed against women, which is still misogyny - the idea that women's bodies belong to men, that rape is inevitable, that men can't or shouldn't have to control themselves, that a man has to be magically stronger than everyone else or he is somehow a bad person rather than the person who hurt him, even if he was only a child and his abuser was an adult. ***</div><div><br></div><div>So I just really cannot understand how anyone can say that there isn't a problem here when the problem is so severe. I don't see anyone really saying that homophobia doesn't exist, and those who say racism is a thing of the past at least acknowledged it existed. &nbsp;In the past, people justified sexism by saying it was best for women and men to have seperate roles and so on, but now people are simply saying sexism isn't happening. &nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>Part of the problem, of course, is our sub-par education system. When you hear someone saying something like "well men are the ones who have built everything", that is a direct product of an education system that has deliberately erased women from history. &nbsp;In the same way, it is a symptom of ignorance that so many people think that something as institutionalized as sexism, wherein women did not receive the vote in the U.S. until the early 20s (for white women anyway), a fundamental human right which women world wide still lack based on gender alone, somehow will have dissapated within less than 100 years, as if all the people who were raised under the old regime immediately decided to treat everyone precisely equally the moment some women got the vote, at a time when women still could not safely wear pants in public, have a legal abortion even after rape or to save her life, hope to be taken seriously as a political candidate or CEO, and so on.</div><div><br></div><div>&nbsp;&nbsp;I know a lot of these people are deliberately self-deluded, but I live in hope that people will consider the actual facts that exist in reality and turn away from ignorance. So I decided to compile some of the really blantantly obvious evidence that someone who has lived in a bubble may have missed. And really, it's not hard for men to live in a bubble. They are taught to stay away from girls from an early age; segregation is still one of the most powerful tools of oppression.</div><div><br></div><div>A lot of people don't know how to think critically. When something makes these people (we'll call them "Jack") uncomfortable - &nbsp;such as the fact that other people might be suffering from a system that Jack benefits from, it make Jack feel bad. He has two options: he can do the hard work of trying to be part of the solution, or he can deny the problem exists.</div><div><br></div><div>I've actually seen people literally suggest, or rather insist, plead, and threaten that people stop talking about sexism because by talking about it they make it worse, or create the problem whole cloth. As if perfectly happy women with no problems are just sitting around, bored, and decided to invent something that isn't real. Nevermind all that historical evidence, nevermind all the data collected by such un-Feminist organizations as the FBI showing things like how many women are murdered by an intimate partner or all the scientific studies and collections of data showing that even male nurses get paid more than female nurses in a field dominated by women that is supposed to be woman's work (just as women in jobs dominated by men get paid less), hell even fields like cooking or poetry are dominated by sometimes super creepy, sexist men.</div><div><br></div><div>The U.S. has never had a serious front-runner female candidate for president, let along an actual female president, and the majority of congress is still male. &nbsp;And to those who say women can't be leaders, that it isn't sexism because women just don't WANT to be leaders and aren't GOOD at it, please please please for the love of humanity study some damn history, because Cleopatra wasn't the only successful female ruler in history.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>I'm glad that things are getting so much better for women that women can actually attend colleges, apply to jobs, run for leadership positions, and so on. But it just hasn't been that long and it sure as hell isn't equal yet. And denying that fact is a huge part of the problem. &nbsp;IF your feelings are hurt by the idea that you should maybe reconsider how you treat women, just think about how those women feel and maybe put basic decency first.</div>Kalenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248563203417205286.post-51255244586376469862015-08-17T09:47:00.001-07:002015-08-17T10:00:51.998-07:00Microscopic opic oblique biopic of opaque cake(a free poem)<div><br></div><div>lemonaide is key</div><div><br></div><div>destroys waste</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;cells</div><div><br></div><div>allergic to citrus</div><div><br></div><div>no gracias, mi doctura dice no citrus por mi, porque dolor de abdomem</div><div><br></div><div>the lining is destroyed</div><div><br></div><div>my body rejecting</div><div><br></div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;on the cellular level</div><div><br></div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;the mitochondria were&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;their own entity once</div><div><br></div><div>what is alive&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>microscopic</div><div><br></div><div>little guys</div><div><br></div><div>running around on their</div><div><br></div><div>dont think</div><div><br></div><div>no brain</div><div><br></div><div>matter that moves&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>programmed</div><div><br></div><div>what is wanting? what is will?</div><div><br></div><div>invaded the cell</div><div><br></div><div>who discovered</div><div><br></div><div>- wait but the cell is not a person either</div><div><br></div><div>what is a nucleus made of?&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>it moves without thinking, along a path, until it collides</div><div><br></div><div>but what differentiates a mitochondrian from a cell from a bug from a tree from the air from the universe?&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>a layer of tissue, a hard clump of cells, a configuration of atoms</div><div><br></div><div>smaller and smaller past where we can measure,</div><div><br></div><div>maybe forever,</div><div><br></div><div>and if not forever then how are endings possible, where could an ending be, how could nothing ever exist?</div><div><br></div><div>nothing seems to be nothing,</div><div>i see something with something, even the naked unmoving air is something,&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>so</div><div><br></div><div>how could snything ever&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>stop?</div>Kalenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248563203417205286.post-76933934283525922702015-08-11T20:46:00.001-07:002015-08-11T20:46:50.730-07:00Recommends: Assigned Male<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7llLDlixhGw/VcrBqQrU5aI/AAAAAAAAABY/LiVYgE4RD7c/s640/blogger-image-427840391.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7llLDlixhGw/VcrBqQrU5aI/AAAAAAAAABY/LiVYgE4RD7c/s640/blogger-image-427840391.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Assigned Male is a webcomic in the "teaching with humor" tradition of the Boondocks, about a young girl who decides to live as what she feels is her true gender despite being assigned male at birth. The comics range from multi panel poignant fictionalized memoir based on the experiences of the author, Sophia, but with more adult language (like Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes) - about friends and growing up, to straight-up trans awareness memes. It's all free of course. And unfortunately, the comic has become the target of bullies who just can't resist the idea of picking on a young girl who speaks her mind. All the more reason to read and even donate! I love this comic for the truths it puts forth about the trans experience.&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">AssignedMale.tumblr.com</div>Kalenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248563203417205286.post-58401776862714299222015-08-03T20:10:00.001-07:002015-08-03T20:10:44.404-07:00Queer for LifePeople often talk about transgender, homosexuality, feminism, and other cases of breaking gender rules as if they are something people choose later in life due to some sort of defiance or illness. &nbsp;It's like they never noticed the queer kids on the playground.<div>&nbsp; &nbsp;When I was little, I got bullied out of my Catholic school. The girls didn't like me, and I wasn't a boy. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was my messy hair or my goody-two-shoes attitude or obnoxious sense of humor or the fact that I knew that "the Pee Girl" was actually a nice person who was fun to play with and didn't care that she had a disorder, and maybe it was because I was a tomboy. I remember one time on the playground when I felt accepted by the boys, when I felt like I was let into the boys club and would be allowed to play with boys - because they gave me a bloody knee. I was bullied into early childhood depression until I started hitting my bullies right in their faces and the adults finally decided to do something.</div><div>&nbsp; When I went to hippie school, I was much happier. The school was diverse racially and in terms of the age groups who played together, and there were lots of kids with special needs. The older kids and teachers kept kids from being bullies. We were free to explore the woods and the park and the school, free to be kids and to play. On the playground I would always be Wolverine, or I wouldn't play. And a little black boy named Emilio would always be Storm.</div><div>&nbsp; Emilio wasn't really a boy, and I am confident that today he is not a man. He was the pink ranger for Halloween, he walked and talked with a swish. I don't remember anyone being mean to him or thinking he was weird. His mom was a cop and his older brother acted gangster.</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;My friends were mostly boys, so I was pretty confused when, on a camping trip, one of my friend's dads decided to cut me out of the group by pitting boys against girls. All of a sudden, I was the enemy, for no good reason. I was so angry at this man for thinking that shit was funny.</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp; In middle school I hung with dudes and would take out my aggression on my guy friends by kicking them and joking around. I thought it was all in good fun but later realized I was kind of being a bully without realizing it. I was just trying to conform to a hyper masculine image, but the guys I hung with were more chill, sensitive, musician types.</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;In High School, I didn't have much sexuality, but I felt some attractions towards boys and some towards... Other girls. Mostly I was just afraid of sex, and deeply in denial that I was different sexually or gender...ly(?). So I was pretty outraged when some of the girls started a rumor about me being a lesbian. I let boys feel me up and just froze, scared they would take it further. I made friends with an older girl and worshipped her, and she did things like give me a private strip tease, but I was happy for the relationship to be unrequited. I wouldn't really be sexually mature until my late 20s, when I would figure out that I was grey-asexual, meaning I prefer to not have sex, even alone, very often. But in early high school, I tried very hard to seem normal - sexual, but not too sexual, straight, and a cis girl. I tried to do things like wear make up, and failed spectacularly. I wasn't being myself.</div><div>&nbsp; By Junior year I found my place, with the stoner boys. I was so, so happy to be one of the guys again, like I had been in middle school, but even more so. My friends literally would tell people I was not a girl, and I approved.</div><div>&nbsp; So when I grew up and learned that magic word transgender and admitted I just might be a lesbian and had a real, deep romantic relationship with a woman and started asserting myself, flirting with name and pronoun changes, wearing clothes that finally felt comfortable and like ME, I thought it was really wired to so many people close to me told me I wasn't trans or a lesbian or whatever (nobody really has thought the asexual thing was that strange though, not sure what to make of that). I've always thought it was obvious that I was queer, it was obvious to the kids who teased me, the street preachers who would look right at me when I was still in denial even to myself, maybe to some of the creeps who sexually harassed me even, since creeps do tend to pick out people they think will be an easy target... When everything snapped into place with that magical word transgender, some of the pieces that snapped were the way other people had treated me. I just don't think queer kids are invisible growing up. I think you can see us just as surely as we know ourselves.&nbsp;</div>Kalenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248563203417205286.post-4039276470824935692015-07-29T09:12:00.002-07:002015-08-03T19:44:45.039-07:00Nightmares of Madden: Life in a Chicago Public Mad House - Part One&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I've got a new addiction. It's Orange is the New Black.&nbsp; As I was watching it, I started having flashbacks. Not to prison. I've never been. I flashed back&nbsp;to a place where the inmates are treated like prisoners. Where people who have been to prison say the food, and atmosphere in general, is worse than prison. A place where people die, are sexually harassed, are raped and then blamed for being raped by the people who failed to protect them, are denied basic nutritional and medical needs, are encouraged by the guards to physically fight without being truly protected from threats of violence, where powerful drugs are administered that turn you into a walking zombie. A place&nbsp;that is supposed to have been a mental health center,&nbsp;not two years ago, roughly October 2013, right after my birthday, in Chicago, USA. <br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It is not always easy for people without mental illness to understand it, but most people know what it feels like to be extremely sad, and everyone experiences moments of irrationality and delusional thinking. Irrational thinking is not a mental illness by itself, because it is so normal.&nbsp; A mental illness is when something is happening in your brain that causes your mood to be unstable enough and your thoughts irrational enough on a consistent basis that it interferes with your life. People with mental illnesses may often be seen by dramatic films as violent, highly delusional stereotypes, but most mental patients are completely normal people who just happen to have an illness.&nbsp; In my case, it was a severe depressive episode.<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A family member had been sexually assaulted.&nbsp; It was the first and only time I had felt a literally murderous rage shake my body, and I understood that "seeing red" is actually a pretty much&nbsp;literal phrase. I had always been afraid that I would be raped, and I had of course feared for other family members, but it still felt like something impossible had happened, like a monster I had dreamed of had walked out of my nightmares and was lurking in my every shadow.&nbsp; Watching her go through the pain of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - crying, screaming, grabbing for a knife to cut herself with right in front of us while I wrestled it out of her hands, not wanting to be touched by anyone for any reason, always needing a light on and&nbsp;not wanting to sleep on a pillow because her rapist had used one to try to suffocate her while she was intoxicated and helpless but trying to struggle and scream, knowing how her body had been damaged as she went to doctors to get medical treatment, watching people in her life blame, shame, and deny her as they continued to hang out with a rapist whose ex-girlfriend was also terrified of him, the entire family going to court to get a restraining order because we were unable to get criminal charges filed because she did not at first think a man holding her down, hitting, choking, and suffocating her was really a rape.... the experience was not only traumatizing for the direct victim, it hurt our entire family, and the person who did that is still free today, because of how our society mistreats rape victims.<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; At the exact same time, I had just lost my independence and my home due to my work hours being cut back and difficulties finding a second job.<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But it wasn't just those things. Something chemical was happening inside me, in my brain, that caused a Depressive Episode.<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;I have been poor and struggling my entire adult life, and I had for the most part been perfectly happy that way.&nbsp; There is a difference between depression and regular stress or feeling "bummed out" or ennui. When I am not having a depressive episode, something terrible like a family death can occur, every day stresses of poverty like barely having enough money for groceries can wear on me, but I do not hit the depths of sadness -&nbsp;barely able and totally&nbsp;unwilling&nbsp;to summon energy to do basic things like clean my room, obsessive self-hatred, paranoid thoughts that long time loyal friends secretly hated me, little ability to find even a few moments of joy in my life. <br>&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Depression runs in my family. More than one family member has "successfully" committed suicide, and many of us have tried, or at least become obsessed with the idea.&nbsp; So when I became so obsessed that the part of me that still wanted to live and still was sane enough to want to protect my family from the pain of losing someone in what I knew damn well was the most&nbsp;terrible way to lose someone, I turned myself in to a mental hospital because I believed it was where I needed to be to recover and keep myself safe.... from myself.&nbsp; Because part of me was still sane enough to know I could be happy again, and I desperately wanted to be happy again (and now I am!). After all, when it really comes down to it, the idea of living your life in misery so other people can be&nbsp;happy (to have a miserable loved one in their life rather than losing that loved one) is a terrible proposition. A suicidal person can be persuaded to endure a painful life for their family, but it is far better to be able to know that you will not always have to endure constant pain - and the intense&nbsp;sadness of depression is very painful.<br>&nbsp; &nbsp; When I went to get help, I thought the hospital would be like the other hospitals I had been in, back when I was still on the family insurance. Strict, constant monitoring by guards who kept us safe. Really good food, better than I ever ate on the Outside, food that I could just feel repairing my weakened body and brain with serious Nutrition; boiled eggs, fresh burgers, crisp broccolis, a different feast every day that we were able to choose for ourselves. Consistant groups and classes. Sure, there were downsides, too, it wasn't a paradise - only compared to Madden.<div>&nbsp; &nbsp;I was in the ravine in the woods sobbing. &nbsp; Trying to gather the courage to slit my wrist. &nbsp;After a long time I realized I really couldn't do it. I called my sister. She sang Monty Python's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" to me over the phone. &nbsp;I laughed, not because she didn't know the second verse began, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Death", but because she really did remind me why I really wanted to live. For her. and not just for her. For all of us. For me too.</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp; My mom called the cops and then called them off when I came up muddy from the woods, ditching my blade in a hollow tree where it must be rusting now. &nbsp;I was wearing three day old clothes with no underwear and I probably hadn't showered in a while so I surely reeked. &nbsp;I had cuts on my arm from trying to work up the nerve to slash the big one. I hid the sleeping pills and aspirin I had brough to take as a back up because pills are expensive; my mom found them later and got rid of them. We went to County hospital ER. &nbsp;I was nearly catatonic. I remember the nurse snapping her fingers in my face and saying "hello!" because I couldn't or wouldn't answer questions, like where I got that big cut. I always think it's stupid when they try to bandage me up after I cut myself, like they're taking care of a wound when I don't deserve or need it, when I'm in that state. &nbsp;My mother stayed with me until I asked her to leave because in wanting to fix me, somehow, she was just stressing me out, not that she wasn't doing her best from a place of love.</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;I was visited by a few doctors and counselors. &nbsp;One man I remember in particular because he talked to me about transgender issues and how he works with trans youth. &nbsp;He had a very realistic attitutude about things like drugs and medication - most counselors in these places will take a very Just Say No hard line, but he acknowledged that something like marjuana might vary in efficacy from user to user. I trust people like that much more than the Just Say No, Not Even Once crowd.</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;I was put in a room with two Latina ladies. The tiny elderly woman wanted to watch Telenovelas and I was happy to oblige. I practiced my Spanish talking with her. The younger one got sick of the TNs and we made a compromise. We were all in there overnight, almost 24 hours. The nurse got really angry at one of the women for vomiting at one point, but she was old and sick and couldn't help it and had been trying to tell them, I was angry at the nurse for being like that in front of the patients. In the middle of the night a man who only spoke Spanish was brought in in restraints, with a cop guarding him, and was screaming. The guards were saying he was a drunk who abused his wife and daughters. I heard them talk to each other about how to tell him things like calm the fuck down, so I taught them a few words in my pigeon Spanish. I felt good, useful. I felt like being in the hospital would be good for me.</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;I was transferred to Madden. The regulations are that I had to be restrained in a bed, I had to wear a paper gown. &nbsp;It makes you feel like less of a person, like an animal. The young man who sat with me in the back of the van was very nice. It was comforting.</div><div><div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp; When I got to the facility, I went through the usual routine - surrendering my dirty clothes and wallet and phone and whatever else I had on me, answering a bunch of questions that I had already answered to someone else. &nbsp;I knew right away that this facility would be awful. The younger Latina who had been at the ER had been so nervous about the hospital had been so worried, I had comforted her, and one of my major selling points was the food. All we got here, after over half a day without food or shower or real rest, was a burnt bowl of oat meal. I could picture her face and I felt like I had betrayed her, The bathroom was worse than at a Public Chicago High School in the 'hood. The guard treated me like I had personally done a series of terrible things to her and was now being imprisoned instead of someone who was suicidal and had turned myself in to get help and had just arrived. &nbsp;Then I was transferred to my ward.</div></div></div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;As they processed me a guard made a joke about how I cut myself, like it was funny or cool or criminal when to me it was sick and painful and shameful. I was so angry at her for that moment of being so unprofessional.</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp; When I got there, I didn't want to see or talk to anyone. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I was in a psych ward. When I am in a deep depressive state, I am afraid of all people and try to hide as much as possible; I get massive anxiety about things like people looking at me, large crowds, and using the phone. So I stayed in bed. I slept for a long time, then slept some more. &nbsp;I finally had to come out for meals and slowly began engaging and socalizing. I wanted to get better.</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;There was one advantage at Madden over other facilities that I want to mention before I really trash the place, because it really wasn't all bad, and there's one very strong reason why, and that is (most of) the people, especially the women (but there were certain men in particular who will always have a place in my heart too). &nbsp;In other facilities, the psychologists were elite and unreachable, and a lot of the staff had an elitist attitude like they couldn't really understand our struggles. The staff at Madden had a few Rotten Assholes, but there were a lot of people there who were working really hard, for very little money, as a labor of love. &nbsp;I was able to see my counselor by my own request after a few days, whereas in richer-people hospitals you got one, maybe two, visits on your way out the door. I was able to talk to a lot of people about my issues. They couldn't necessarily do anything about it, but they listened, they really cared, and they really felt me. There was the lady who played Scrabble and the Deaf man who gave a quiet strength and a big heart to our recreation, and the social workers who knew most of us had been abused and taught us not to blame ourselves.... there were a lot of good people holding up that shitty roof. And they were honest. They knew the food was bad, they knew it wasn't the best place to work. They put up with a lot of abuse from the patients and (except for the Rotten Assholes) were remarkably patient and understanding. &nbsp;The staff are not the main problem at that place. The main problem is the main problem the poor always have - no money. And yes, getting screwed by a system that doesn't care about the poor and sick.</div><div><br></div><div>Next installment, I will talk more about what happened when the shit really started to hit the fan - about why a hardcore Atheist found zirself leading Bible studies, whether or not I actually killed a "wealthy" bitch over some coloring book pages, just what kind of drugs you can get when you throw a tantrum there, what a panic attack feels like, the war veteran who thought I was his cheating ex-girlfriend when I was actually a mental patient asking him to intervene agaisnt sexual harassment, the girl who couldn't remember her name or how to deal with her period, and more. Stay tuned.</div>Kalenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248563203417205286.post-33991811876130110872015-07-14T22:20:00.001-07:002015-07-14T22:22:45.621-07:00Recommends!: Manic Pixie Nightmare Girls<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7wwpnVWBhLU/VaXtj470yPI/AAAAAAAAABE/gQuA9U_LvtE/s640/blogger-image--1497964114.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7wwpnVWBhLU/VaXtj470yPI/AAAAAAAAABE/gQuA9U_LvtE/s640/blogger-image--1497964114.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Jessica's comics are amazing because they give the reader an unapologetic look into the life of a trans woman and teach trans feminism some comics are just about her own life, like human awkwardness at a party, others are biting criticisms of mainstream transmysogyny in our culture. I would describe her art style as conveying the general feeling of a bubbly but awkward girl next door and the writing as a sensible SJW, which is a compliment. I recommend her not just to trans people but to cis people who want to be good allies to trans people. Manic Pixie Nightmare Girls is on Tumble and Facebook for free, pretty much weekly. She is strict about maintaining a safe space on FB but can also be very kindly indulgence with people who just need a little help understanding her POV, not that she should have to indulge us in that way. &nbsp;http://themanicpixienightmaregirl.tumblr.com/</div>Kalenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248563203417205286.post-9602338182686114532015-07-14T12:36:00.001-07:002015-07-14T12:46:27.024-07:00Bill Clinton is (almost definitely) a rapist and sexual harasserWhile Bill Cosby is finally having to pay for his lifetime of serial rapes, Bill Clinton has never had to pay. Most people don't even know Bill C. was accused of rape and sexual harassment multiple times, and that it was THOSE accusations that led to a national "scandal" about one consensual sexual ecounter he had as president. &nbsp;Take a moment to think about how fucked up that is - people got really upset and pissed off that the man had consensual sex with someone other than his wife, and completely forgot about a string of rape and harassment allegations.<div>In (probably) 1978 at the Camelot hotel, according to five witnesses and the victim herself, Clinton allegedly raped a nursing home administrator. This was covered in the Wall Street Journal and other prominent news publications. &nbsp;The brave survivor of this rape, Juanita Broaddrick, said that Clinton tried to apologize to her in 1991, and she told him, rightly, to "go to hell", because she does not owe a rapist her forgiveness. &nbsp;After all, the most powerful man in the country certainly was willing to keep hurting her by continuing to deny it publicly and legally. One witness found the victim "distraut" directly afterwards, the others were informed by the victim afterwards. &nbsp;The victim did not come forward publicly for many years, as most rape victims do not, especially in the 70s.</div><div>In 1998, a woman named Kathleen Willey said Clinton had groped her in a hallway in 1993. Her case was dismissed by authorities.</div><div>Clinton was also known to use the Jeffrey Epstein private airline, which solicited underage teenage prostitutes (which is rape; a young teenager is not old enough to consent to sex work with adults). Epstein refused to admit or deny his relationship with Clinton. &nbsp;Epstein's victims, the teenage sex slaves, later sued, if anyone reading this is sick enough to doubt that young girls lack the agency to be prostitutes.</div><div>Paula Jones brought a sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton. &nbsp;Jones was raked through the coals in the media, and Clinton is still seen as a hero whose only crime was consensual sex, but Clinton ultimately had to pay her $850,000 to settle the suit, indicating that it was not without merit. &nbsp;Most people forget that Jones was talking about HARASSMENT, not consensual sex. They also forget that the Clinton impeachment was based on perjury, not consensual sex.</div><div><br></div><div>Why is a powerful white man who was president able to get away with rape? Well the answer is self evident in the question.</div><div><br></div><div>But it is past time that we started holding him accountable for his crimes.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div><br></div>Kalenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248563203417205286.post-64215527863930199562015-07-08T19:10:00.001-07:002015-07-30T15:06:11.957-07:00I Believe Them: Cosby and Rape CultureWhen women first began telling people around them that Bill Cosby had raped them, over 30 years ago, the victims were discouraged from reporting to police, victim-blamed, made to believe that taking on a powerful man would destroy the victim's life and result in no justice. &nbsp;This was the typical handling of rape victims at the time and prior to that time for thousands of years in a sexist society in which women had only recently earned the vote. <a href="https://www.blogger.com/(http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/13/bill-cosby-raped-me-why-did-it-take-30-years-for-people-to-believe-my-story/)">(http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/13/bill-cosby-raped-me-why-did-it-take-30-years-for-people-to-believe-my-story/)</a><br><div>When one woman got some small measure of justice in court, and the man admitted to activities that confirmed he was a rapist, those records were kept from the public, the woman presurred to settle out of court, the press ditched the story, and the powerful man was able to go on to rape over 40 women.</div><div><br></div><div>When women again began reporting on this rape years later, older and more secure in a society that is less sexist and beginning to rebel against rape culture and fight for the rights of rape victims, the first women to report were told by the public that their word was not strong enough evidence to be believed. It's only one woman, they said, she is lying for money. Even though there is no money to be had from saying a rape occurred many years ago, and there certainly isnt any positive /attention to be had when people are calling you a liar and worse.<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">&nbsp; Whenever a rape victim stands up for herself, men and even women come crawling out of the internet woodwork to call her names and harass her. &nbsp;Not that it's only online; in real life, women have been driven to suicide by angry mobs after taking their rapist to court, even when there is enough evidence including an actual photo or video of the rape that the rapists actually are convicted.<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/rehtaeh-parsons"> (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/rehtaeh-parsons</a>/)</span></div><div><br></div><div>Of course, when rapists are convicted, even the rapists of children are too often given a slap on the wrist. &nbsp;We read about people who raped children being freed after a handful of years - such as the rapist who was recently dating "Honey Boo Boo"'s mother, the rapists who live in "Miracle Village" (<a href="http://www.vice.com/read/inside-miracle-village-379">http://www.vice.com/read/inside-miracle-village-379</a>), the judge who reduced a TODDLER rapist's sentence because he "didnt intend to harm" a TODDLER when he RAPED A TODDLER (<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/07/kevin-rojano-child-rapist-sentence-reduced_n_7019762.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/07/kevin-rojano-child-rapist-sentence-reduced_n_7019762.html</a>), the prosecutor who called a ELEVEN year old gang rape victim a "spider" and blamed her for being assaulted by GROW MEN (<a href="http://jezebel.com/5964064/lawyer-says-11-year-old-gang-rape-victim-was-a-spider-luring-men-into-web">http://jezebel.com/5964064/lawyer-says-11-year-old-gang-rape-victim-was-a-spider-luring-men-into-web</a>), the young teen mocked online<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">&nbsp;for being a rape victim: (<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/jul/17/jadapose-online-ridiculing-rape-victims-sickening-trend">http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/jul/17/jadapose-online-ridiculing-rape-victims-sickening-trend</a>), the Stuebenville case in which an entire community harassed the victim and protected the rapists, all while documenting the rape, then the proven rapists got less than two years in jail and the adults complicit got a slap on the wrist (</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/laurie-penny/2013/03/steubenville-rape-cultures-abu-ghraib-moment">http://www.newstatesman.com/laurie-penny/2013/03/steubenville-rape-cultures-abu-ghraib-moment</a>); then of course there's rapsts like&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, and Stephen Collins, the latter a confessed rapist, who are beloved while their victims are attacked. &nbsp;Then there are men who raped women or other men who walk free, like Mike Tyson, a brutal rapist who was offered a TV show after release. &nbsp;People just don't care much about protecting people from rape. &nbsp;Drug dealers get longer sentences. Homosexuals get more social condemnation.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Through all this, men are gathering online to express fear that women are demanding consent; of course, this fear for them is twisted into a fear of "false" rape accusations; many rapists don't truly understand what consent even is. &nbsp;Many men even believe that being married to a woman, or having had a relationship with her once, or a woman being drunk or unconcious or seen as promiscuous, entitles a man to force her into sexual activities. This isn't something that evil Social Justice Feminasties invented, it's something that is well documented by science, such as case study interviews with rapists, and law enforcement like the FBI.&nbsp;</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Large recent rape study:&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2013/9/half-of-men-report-using-violence-and-a-quarter-perpetrate-rape-according-to-un-survey">http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2013/9/half-of-men-report-using-violence-and-a-quarter-perpetrate-rape-according-to-un-survey</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Stats collected from FBI etc:&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.rainn.org/statistics">https://www.rainn.org/statistics</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Yet as more women are finding the courage and the social support to fight more forcefully against rape culture, many men are reacting by simply calling women liars. Nevermind the data.</span></div><div><br></div><div>As more women came out to support each other and bravely tell the world that they are survivors of rape, people continued to defend Cosby, saying that all these women and the various witnesses that also came forward, and of course all the journalists and lawyers involved with the accusations and legal case, must all be working together in an elaborate conspiracy to destroy one man for no real reason. &nbsp;Because it makes a lot more sense that 60 or so people would work together flawlessly on a seemingly pointless conspiracy. It makes no sense when you break it down. Does the man really even have enough money to go around to this cabal? Why wouldn't the Evil Conspiracy keep their numbers smaller to get a bigger share and ensure secrecy? Why out him when threatening to out him - er, I mean falsely accuse him - is a better way to get money; why would he give people money AFTER they already have spoken against him, when the statue of limitations is up?</div><div><br></div><div>Speaking of which - a man recently killed a known child rapist (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/courtroom-applauds-n-man-admits-killing-molester-article-1.2262471) because he was unable, after many years, to prevent the man from raping. &nbsp;The judge lowered the charges and the jury applauded the man. Yet online, the rapist has his defenders, who again believe that the multiple adult survivors of this abuse coming forward today to suppor the survivor who killed the child rapist are all in on some grand conspiracy together - because a man killing his old scout leader for no reason and making up a lie about rape, and somehow getting other people to have his back while in police custody, makes more sense than a man wanting to get revenge and protect kids from a rapist.</div><div><br></div><div>People will go to all sorts of insane lengths to excuse and protect rapists. And it needs to stop. Becuase ANYONE can be a victim and the only way to protect ourselves is by making the world safer for victims to come forward and less safe for rapists to walk free.</div><div><br></div><div>The majority of rape victims never report. Of those that do, the majority of rapists never spend a day in jail, nevermind getting a serious sentence of more than a few months.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>Police have turned away rape victims by blaming them or denying that they were raped, or even prosecuting them (http://www.vice.com/read/i-was-rapedand-then-the-police-told-me-i-made-it-up) and then covering up their mistake. &nbsp;Police have also, of course, tortured and raped and murdered people.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>Police, judges and other people tell sex workers they cannot be raped (http://ethicsalarms.com/2013/11/02/can-a-prostitute-be-raped/) because apparently being a sex worker means your body is public property in their view, to be tortued as much as anyone wishes, because being a sex worker (which is often not even a choice, some women, girls, and boys and men are sex slaves) makes you subhuman in some way to their eyes.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>People make a joke about men being raped in prison (women are also raped in prison, often by guards, and they dont deserve it for things like being a drug addict), people think men cant be raped by women.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>Tens of thousands of rape kits have gone untested. For decades. Meaning police ARENT EVEN INVESTIGATING rapes when victims come forward.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.endthebacklog.org/backlog/what-backlog">http://www.endthebacklog.org/backlog/what-backlog</a></div><div><br></div><div>Society blames and shames rape victims and denies the realities of rape.</div><div><br></div><div>What can you do? Properly educate yourself. Talk &nbsp;to your loved ones, especially young teens and pre-teens, about consent. Stand up for rape victims when others say ignorant things. &nbsp;Vote for politicians who will support victims. Get in touch with your local police and pressure them to support victims. Donate or volunteer for rape crisis organizations. Attend a Slut Walk or other protest in support of reforms. Write you respresentatives and demand change, support change in your social life, online, in your workplace. And keep educating yourself throughout.</div><div><br></div><div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What we need is a social change. We need people to be educated about consent and rape. We need police and the general public to be supportive towards rape victims. We need rapes adequately investigated and prosecuted. We need to end the statute of limitations and increase sentencing and sentences so that rapists are kept away from the general public. We as a society need to decide that rape is a serious crime and do something about it. And that starts by not pretending the problem does not exist. We need to start believing victims instead of automatically condemning them. We need people to be able to trust us with their pain, and we need to help protect those people - and in doing so, we can protect ourselves and our children.</span></div></div><div><br><strong style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px;">Need help?</strong><br><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px;">Call 800.656.HOPE (4673) to be connected with a trained staff member from a sexual assault service provider in your area. (via RAINN)</span><br><br>edit: I was thinking a bit more about the racial aspect of the Cosby case in particular.&nbsp; I won't go too much into it, but I would like to say that (1) black men are certainly more likely to be seen a predatory (see my open letter to Dylann Roof), and more likely&nbsp;to be punished for rape. White men like Bill Clinton (who, yes, was&nbsp;accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault) are more likely to get away&nbsp;with it.&nbsp;(2) Of the very, very, VERY rare instances of actual false rape accusations, black men have disproportionately been victims (ie lynching), although in some of those cases a rape had actually occurred, the lynching victim just didn't get a fair trial and may not have been the actual rapist; in some cases, consensual sex&nbsp;may have been&nbsp;misconstrued as rape by white men (not by the female in question) with proprietary attitudes towards women. This is also true of most&nbsp;unjust rape accusations&nbsp;that are later exonerated - a&nbsp;stranger rape did occur, but&nbsp;the wrong offender was imprisoned.&nbsp;(3) Black women deserve to be protected from rape. Black women were systematically raped by white men, but they have also been raped by black men, and some of Cosby's victims were women of color, so while it is certainly racist that Cosby gets more negative press than men like Woody Allen, it is also racist to presume that the women of color are not victims of rape deserving of protection.</div><div><br></div><div>Edit: I would like to add that in Cosby's own words, in his own deposition, he said no woman had asked him for money. All they asked was for an apology. He refused.</div>Kalenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248563203417205286.post-12914433911115652892015-07-07T18:38:00.001-07:002015-07-07T19:08:56.854-07:00The Machina Treatment; Hyana: the Dead Marsh March<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Background:<br>tentatively titled "The Machina Treatment", the story takes place in an (alt universe) earth city called Shikaga not long after earth is invaded &amp; colonized by aliens.&nbsp; Some humans, called "homs", have been essentially transformed into cyborgs. This is a flashback scene, but the main narrative will take place thousands of years from this point, at which point there will be very few homs left, all of the cyborg variety, basicly in hiding - until a young hom of unknown origins appears &amp; ignites a revolution....<br>Other the shit you should know about this world : there is a zombie-like plague that the aliens brought with them, &amp; the cyborg technology was partially modeled after a biological process call "vorm-ing" that some aliens are capable of, which is essentially changing your body from a solid to a liquid &amp;/ gas.</span><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">....</span><br style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px;"><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b><u>Hyana: The Dead Marsh March</u></b><br><br></span><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yip realized he was shivering, shaking the sticky rotten visceral guts he was stuck in like a giant tape-worm thrashing around in the beast’s corpse, as if it were still fighting for life.&nbsp; He fought to keep his body still, focusing on the sound of moaning, scraping feet coming closer, but he still had no power to control his limbs. He opened his eyes slowly, a sliver at a time, seeking through the bloody slit of furry skin.&nbsp; He could see the faces of the Dead Men glowing, just in sight, through the weeds – bony fingers like claws outstretched - &amp; in the distance, lit up by a giant red moon, his eyes struggled upwards through the bloodied fur &amp; guts, reaching up to grasp the lone loping shadow staggering over the highest point in the Black Hills with the small body of a fresh kill slung over its’ back. As he clutched his teeth together to keep them from chattering and shut his eyes tight to silence their light &amp; their horrible visions again, Yip thought bitterly that when had dreamed of adventures in the wild, this was not what he had pictured.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">this thought had first come to him early on- after &nbsp;weeks of aching feet and aching bellies crossing endless expanses of Nothing, silently listening for danger, searching the dry cracked ground for weeds to eat – if this was adventure, he thought, how much more exciting to be safe at home in bed with a viewscreen!&nbsp; But all that was gone now – he’d be lucky to live through it.&nbsp; No </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">Hom</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"> had- why did he think he would be any different?</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As the days wore on, Yip’s hope that the food would last the journey through the Dead Marsh had slowly drained away.&nbsp; Griff did not mind – Marlocks store nutrients in the large bumps sticking out all over their skin like bulbous zits. &amp; Zelop was a small, spiky reptilian, he could go a very long time with very little but bugs to eat.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">Griff did what he could to comfort Yip, carrying him for long stretches..&nbsp; Yet Hyana, a mere</span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;"> hom</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"> like himself, did not seem to fear death, &nbsp;tho she herself had said that no </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">hom </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">had crossed the Dead Marsh and lived. With her it sounded like a challenge.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">Nothing ever seemed to worry Hyana, the Shadow Huntress. She may have been a </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">hom, </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">a primitive Earther ape native,</span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">but Yip often thought she must be part machine.&nbsp; She wore a cold stone mask no matter what happened, whether tredging hours through sinking mud or starving or skinning a fresh kill, it made no difference to her – she never seemed to suffer, to feel the slightest pain, never complained, always moving steadily &amp; silently – she could kill as easily as one swats a fly, with that much emotion.&nbsp; It was only when she was hunting – stalking her prey – that Yip could almost see almost see light behind her eyes - &nbsp;hidden though they were behind a thin bent panel of black glass.&nbsp; She was grim, but not solemn, exactly– the corners of her mouth seemed permanently lifted in a smug little smirk, as if she were always laughing at the expense off the rest of the world, holding deep within her a cruel joke that only she had the wisdom to understand.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Her skin seemed to shift into the shadows or whiten in the sun like a DawnScraper, &nbsp;seemed to Yip she could be black as night or white as the sands of the Endless Desert.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">If Yip was puzzled and awed by Hyana, the Marlocks were staggered by this strange </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">hom.</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"> “Our </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">fem Hom</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"> there, it no sleep?” &nbsp;Griff grumfed, shifting his aft-hump closer to the watch fire.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">“All </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">homs</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"> sleep, Griff, even the Huntress- sometime.. right, Yip?” Zelop said.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“yup” Yip said.&nbsp; Yet he thought to himself that he had never once seen her so much as close her eyes completely.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">“that one there, no sleep.&nbsp; Griff watch. Huntress has open eyes – starlit, dark, every breath. &nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">Homs</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"> is Darkers, no?”</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Zelop snorted. “Shit, Griff, how long you been on this planet? Homs ain’t Darkers or StarSiders.&nbsp; This planet rotates, scumsucker. Even the slowest shadow stalker could see that!&nbsp; Day and Night are a matter of time, not distance – &nbsp;or didn’t you notice?”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">Marlocks never laugh, so Griff did not, but he did seem amused – “</span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">Homs</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"> is Dawnscrapers, then – dark &amp; light- sun &amp; shadow.”</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“yup. We sleep at night cuz we can’t see so good, tho.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">suddenly he felt himself grabbed from behind. A squeal emerged from his throat into a leather gloved hand.&nbsp; It was Hyana.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Never tell anyone your weaknesses, noob.” She hissed in his ear, “&amp; especially never attempt to discern mine.” she tossed him lightly back to the ground. With her other hand, she pulled a string of critter corpses from her shoulders – all she’d been able to catch on the dry plains –little birds &amp; rats.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> &nbsp;“meat” she glowed, &nbsp;picking up a knife and bending to strip away the skin.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yip looked around at his companions, who didn’t seem to have noticed – they were drooling towards the meat.&nbsp; Hyana set the naked meat on the spit.&nbsp; Her eyes glittered as he glared at her – but his eyes lowered to the meat and he held his tongue.&nbsp; Hyana did not-</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“take what we call Firebirds.&nbsp; Guess what their weakness is?”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">She flicked her fingers and flames shot out into the sky,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yip shrieked and cowered under a rock.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The flames exploded colors into the blacknesss.&nbsp; Orange and purple and shades the hom-eyed watchers could not see.&nbsp; Glinting off Hyana’s shark-teethed as she grinned against the lighted sky... </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yip watched as two red &amp; yellow winged birds suddenly appeared, screeching, flapping down at them as if to stamp them out or scratch them up and eat them.&nbsp; Hyana drew her bow, shot them down, &amp; began carving them up.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“how did you do that?” Yip asked Hyana wonderingly, “what was that thing?”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">Firebursts”. Hyana grinned,”a </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">hom </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">&nbsp;spawn, scum-ape earther , who does not know firebursts? Tsk, tsk, what is this world coming to?”</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">“Well, I didn’t come from </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">Homs…”</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">no shit, let me guess - you were raised by Japners? those pointy headed little spider fucks &nbsp;with skin like jagged rock?”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“don’t call them that. They’re Jasperians.&nbsp; They’re my family.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Our Huntress is Speciesist.” &nbsp;Griff grunted.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“How can a Hom be Specieist?” Zelop said to him, “We’re the ones who took over their planet.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“you’re their dog,” Hyana taunted Yip, &nbsp;“They cut off your balls and teach you to do tricks?” &nbsp;</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yip blushed and scowled. &nbsp;“you don’t know anything.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Zelop made a screeching sound &amp; flicked his upper tongue in the air like a razor-edged ribbon – “Japners are scum.&nbsp; They take other species as pets.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“My Jasperian family respects me!” Yip protested, rising, cheeks flushed red.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Hyana did not even look at him. He threatened her about as much as a small child might. “If you like them so damn much, why aren’t you with them instead of out here crossing this death trap like a fool?”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Same reason as you – &nbsp;I wanna lay my stakes on that Asteroid.” Yip pulled his small pickaxe from his belt where he kept it for use as a sort of multi-tool.&nbsp; He didn’t have the first clue what he’d be mining, but a giant hunk of rock fallen from space had to have something useful inside it, if the memes of smiling miners on his viewscreen’s book of faces were true as they felt.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br><br></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Hyana seemed to creep forward, through the shadows, her white eyes gleaming- “Seems to me like you’re running from something.&nbsp; I know the scent of desperation, and it’s all over you.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yip said nothing – swallowing hard, he slumped back down in his seat, put away his axe, packed up &amp; pulled smoke from his pipe to keep water from flowing from his eyes. He had started to think he should hide himself from Hyana, curl up inside his shell. Bow your head and follow. Good Dog.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Hyana tore off a small chunk of raw Marshrat in her claws and began chewing it as the fire crackled over the tiny bodies tied in a line to the spit. Griff had begun chewing on the feathers the Huntress had discarded.&nbsp; Zelop, uninterested In meat or fire, had crawled uphill to stare at the sky.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Ice storm coming” He screeched.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Hyana nodded. &nbsp;“gonna stick your head in the mud, Lizard-man?”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Zelop bit at his front claw “&amp; sleep away my share of the bounty?&nbsp; I’m a better digger than any of you hot-bloods.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He scuttled out to the edge of a rock to catch moon-rays while the &nbsp;mammals settled under furs before the fire.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The next morning when Yip woke, Zelop was gone.&nbsp; They looked all over, but there was no trace of the lizard.&nbsp; Finally Griff said he must have dug himself a hole and hibernated after all.&nbsp; The ice storm never hit.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Soon there were fewer and fewer animals to kill for meat, &nbsp;less edible vegetation, &amp; only the greenest of water. &nbsp;&nbsp;Yip began to really understand that the Dead Swamp was not a casual nickname, &amp; it finally occurred to him that he, too, could die. The fear he would be the next to fall gripped him like ice. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But he was wrong. It happened shortly after a rare miracle occured, &amp; Hyana was able to catch a snake &amp; make snake stew with some foragings. As they crossed the muddy swamp on fallen trees, suddenly Griff kneeled over in the mud.&nbsp; He began to sink. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“pull him out!” Hyana screamed.&nbsp; She had already fashioned a rope, which she threw around his head. &nbsp;“Get down there &amp; push!” she called to Yip, cracking her whip against his ankle.&nbsp; Yip was afraid to go in the mud, but he thought of all the times Griff had carried him, and he struggled against the big body.&nbsp; Griff seemed dead already, seemed to push against him as if to bring him into the swampy afterlife with him, but Hyana pulled hard on his neck and they laid his massive body out on the shore.&nbsp; Yip thrust his head to one of the creature’s hearts and listened until long after it stopped beating.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“What do we do now?” Yip asked mournfully, looking up at Hyana through Griff’s still silent fur.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“We eat him.” The Huntress said calmly.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“We can’t!” Yip cried.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Why not?”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“What if he’s poisoned? We could get sick.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Oh, he was poisoned.” She grinned, “ but we won’t get sick.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“What do you mean?”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“carrots.” She growled. “they’re poison to Marlocks.” &nbsp;She began slitting open Griff’s sagging hump, “but not to us. “</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“how do you know that?”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Nevermind how I know. He’s dead. meat’s meat.” &nbsp;She flicked her hand and out shot her knife.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Griff isn’t meat!” Yip protested.&nbsp; He wanted to get down and hug his friend’s carcass, but he could not make his leaden legs move.&nbsp; He trembled.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">“Fuck’s sake, Yip, you dumbfuck Jarp-licker, he’s just a shaggy scumfuck humpback alien fatsacks.&nbsp; If we don’t eat him, we starve, it’s simple as that. Why do you think they call it the Dead Marsh?&nbsp; There’s no food anywhere, as far as I know there’s no other way to make it forward or even back &amp; I know better than anyone; no way to carry enough food...&nbsp; Marlocks, on the other hand, carry their food on their backs. &amp; now he’s dead, and it’s our food.“ the corners of her mouth twitched. </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"><br></span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"> &nbsp;Far off, Yip thought he heard a Mad Dog laughed.&nbsp; He gazed out at the rocky, jungle swamp around him, thick weeds reaching dead fingers towards dark clouds reflected in still green water. He wanted to look anywhere but Griff’s giant shaggy corpse being split under Hyana’s knife.&nbsp; Suddenly a fury overwhelmed his more sensible cowardice -</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“You – you – you only brought him here to kill him!” he screamed at her.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Hyana considered him a moment.&nbsp; She seemed to hold his eyes with hers, a shock of white ice and deep midnight jungle black.&nbsp; Yip felt wild panic but could not will himself to move.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">“yes.” She said finally, rising slowly, body twisting towards him, bloodied knife in hand at her side.&nbsp; Yip could not help it. He sprang back a pace and yelped.&nbsp; Hyana chuckled low &amp; spread her fingers, dropping the knife; both homs knew this didn’t truly disarm her. “Yip, my </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">hom bro, </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">I ain’t got shit against you if you got nothin’ on me, dig?”</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Yea-yea…”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“As it happens, Yip, I’m the only way in hell you’re going to survive this, even if it’s only for a few days....&nbsp; All you have to do is listen to me &amp; try not to do anything stupid, you understand?”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Y-yes.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">Good. </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">Homs</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"> gotta stick together, right?&nbsp; Build a fire.”</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">She stripped &amp; flayed the meat and made a thick soup and pemmican balls out of the fat that had been stored in the hump.&nbsp; Hyana made Yip help her drain the water first, through a bladder.&nbsp; Yip kept thinking of Griff rubbing his big shaggy face against his in greeting and it made him dry-heave.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Hyana gave him water and warned him, fingers lightly tapping the back of his neck, “If you puke him up after we eat him, you’ll have to eat up the puke. We don’t have enough to be wasted.” &nbsp;This, of course, only made him sick, but there was not yet anything in his stomach &amp; he gasped dryly like a fish, half hoping he vomited his guts up and died right there.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He did not bother to ask if she knew what had happened to Zelop. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It was that night that the hail storm finally hit.&nbsp; Hyana did not allow them to make camp.&nbsp; They struggled against the rocky stones below two great shields Hyana had made from Grif’s circular bones.&nbsp; Even in death, Grif was still protecting Yip.&nbsp; And so was Hyana-</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“So why do you keep me alive?” he shouted to her.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“You won’t stay alive long if you don’t pay attention.” She said flatly, just loud enough to be heard.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He ran a few paces and swung around to stand in front of her. The ice rocks hit against his spine.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Why didn’t you kill me, too?” he moaned, staring into her silvery eyes.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">“I need you, Yip.&nbsp; Sometimes two do better than one.&nbsp; Besides, </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">Homs</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"> have to stick together.” &nbsp;She pushed past him and continued climbing against the storm.&nbsp; Yip ran after her.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“How do I know you won’t betray me?”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I would never betray my own kind.” She said.&nbsp; The corners of her mouth dancing.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In the morning when the storm settled Hyana made Yip another soup of Grif’s innards – she herself ate only the pemicin -&amp; insisted on carrying him on her back so he could sleep.&nbsp; He dreamed of riding inside of one of Griff’s humps, stuck inside the viscera, unable to breathe - &nbsp;He woke to the sound of howling. Night had fallen.&nbsp; Hyana, with him on his back, had shot a giant Darkwolf and her cub, which lay at her feet.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">you’ll want your pick.” Hyana told him, handing the simple miner’s tool to him.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“W-why?”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I don’t need it. I’ve already got one.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“What?” he gasped groggily, hoping this was still a dream.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A shadow fell across Hyana’s face.&nbsp; The flashing panel wrapt tight below her eyes turned deep space &nbsp;&nbsp;black – the corners of her mouth still teasing a smirk, the deadly snaggle-toothed grin of a shadowcat – only her eyes betrayed a flashing light – she spoke in a low purr, a growl as she slunk closer-</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">“don’t you know why </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">homs</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"> never cross the Marsh Wastes?&nbsp; It’s a fuckin’ breeding ground for the Corpse Plague, man.&nbsp; The Dead walk deep in the Dark Marsh Waste – and you know what they like to eat, don’t you?”</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">Yip began to tremble. &nbsp;&nbsp;Of course he &nbsp;did. &nbsp;</span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">Homs</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"> everywhere still spoke of the Corpse Plague in hushed voices.&nbsp; The bodies of the dead rising to feed on the flesh of the living – suddenly he thought he could hear them groaning through the trees</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“No!” he sputtered – “it’s not true! They’re all dead!”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“oh, they’re dead all right.” Hyana said. &nbsp;“they’re dead and they smell blood. Can you run?”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I can’t m-move my legs.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">Hyana grinned. &nbsp;“Marlock liver.&nbsp; Poison to </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">homs</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">. Paralyzes you. Those Dead Eaters love blood – especially hom blood.” &nbsp;She reached down and shoved Yip into the wolf’s carcus.&nbsp; In one swift motion, she lifted the cub over, onto her shoulder.&nbsp; She grinned down at Yip, tucked inside the wolf. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">“This bitch was following us long time, waiting for us to die.&nbsp; They’ll smell her first, then they’ll smell you.&nbsp; They have a preference for living</span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;"> hom</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"> hosts.”</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“W-why are you doing this?&nbsp; Yip called, fighting &amp; failing to move his leadening limbs.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">Hyana grin never faded. &nbsp;“sometimes two go better than one” she growled. &nbsp;&nbsp;“ I needed another </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">hom </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">to keep these fucks busy while I get past.”</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“you said you’d never betray your own kind” Yip whined, eyes filling uselessly with water.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">“I lied to you, Yip. I hate </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">homs</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"> more than any other creature. You’re just meat to me like all the rest of them.”</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As he pleaded weakly to her, she turned her back on him and continued her journey East as the Dead Eaters began stumbling from the woods towards the fresh meat. &nbsp;</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Years later they would talk of seeing a single figure walking alone down the mountain, and wonder how it was that all of Hyana’s party died and yet she seemed so unchanged, well fed and cheerful even, when she returned alone.</span></span></p></div></div>Kalenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248563203417205286.post-48446488442986778892015-07-07T08:42:00.004-07:002015-08-24T17:10:34.065-07:00Trans People Are Tired of Holding Your Cissy Hand&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Trans people are constantly asked - demanded - to justify our existence, prove we are natural, prove we really have a right to dress how we want and control our own bodies how we want, prove aren't sick in the head, prove we aren't&nbsp;evil pervert sodomites who want to rape&nbsp;lesbians and diddle kiddies and trick men into sucking dick&nbsp;just because we break gender conventions. <br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Most of this hate is focused on trans women; akin to the homophobic ire lashed against gay men that often forgets lesbians exist. For example, when AIDS is brought up as a reason homosexuality is wrong, it is logically inconsistent&nbsp;due to&nbsp;the fact that lesbians have a much&nbsp;lower rate of AIDS than straight women. If higher AIDS rates makes a sexual orientation incorrect in some way, logically women should be lesbians.&nbsp; This is, of course, just one example of the dysfunctionality of homophobic rationalizations. The anger towards men who break gender boundaries - whether by having "feminine" qualities, by having sex with other men instead of women, or by rejecting their assigned male sex altogether - is generally thought to be generated from misogyny, from the desire to keep women in a lower social status.&nbsp; <br>&nbsp;&nbsp; Men rejecting, or failing to fit in to,&nbsp;the superior male status threatens that system. In the same way that bigots often ignore lesbians, they also often ignore trans men. As a result, activists also often ignore trans men.&nbsp; Even more ignored by everyone are Non-Binary trans people, who identify as both man and woman, or as&nbsp;neither. There is also such a thing as the existence of intersex people, who are born with ambiguous genitalia that is often mutilated to conform to female or (rarely) male.<br>&nbsp; The hateful narratives don't have room for any complexity, compassion,&nbsp;real data,&nbsp;or science. Bigots are not known for their research skills.<br>&nbsp; When bigots demand answers from trans people, they don't listen to the answers.&nbsp; Trans people, allies, human rights groups, and scientists who study transgender&nbsp;have put out tons of information in recent years. Organizations like the APA (<a href="http://www.apa.org/topics/lgbt/transgender.aspx">http://www.apa.org/topics/lgbt/transgender.aspx</a>) and the WHO (<a href="http://www.who.int/hiv/topics/transgender/en/">http://www.who.int/hiv/topics/transgender/en/</a>)&nbsp;have tons of info up on their websites. The scientific consensus supports trans identities and the human rights consensus supports trans rights. History books are starting to include us, there are blogs, there is just tons of information out there where once, very recently, we were virtually&nbsp;invisible. Rational, compassionate, informed people get it. So why don't the bigots? Because they don't want to.<br>&nbsp; Every forum and (*shudder) <em>comment section</em> in which bigots are arguing with trans people and our allies is filled with the same misinformation/rationalizations over and over, and the same explanations being ignored, like a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving bulldozing over their "libtard" niece with his conservative radio talking points without letting her get a word in. These bigots demand, relentlessly, to be proven wrong, and then when they are proven wrong they don't even follow links or take a moment to consider the rational&nbsp;arguments offered them&nbsp;in favor of equality, because they are too committed to feeling "right" about their original ignorant hate that they insist is neither hate or irrational, even when they are literally threatening trans people with anger-fueled violence (just because we are trans).<br>&nbsp; Trans people are sick and tired of holding cis people's hands - even the "nice" ones who *want* to learn - and walking you through who we are. We are sick and tired of begging for simple equality and basic safety.&nbsp; Even begging you to be quiet and go educate yourself before declaring us inferior in some way really should be beneath both of us. You, cis people, are capable and should be responsible for doing some basic study about us on your own before speaking against us.&nbsp; I certainly don't speak against, say, the Bible without having properly&nbsp;read it (and talked to many&nbsp;Christians) first. You really should never be criticizing someone when you haven't taken the time to listen to their point of view first; and really listen, really try to understand and feel them.<br>&nbsp; Demanding someone *prove* their worth and humanity to you is degrading. It's just another form that bigotry takes. &amp; trans people shouldn't have to deal with that shit all the damn time. Enough is enough. It's 2015, you have an internet connection. Grow up, grow a heart, and educate yourself properly. Stop asking trans people to hold your hand and walk you through why we are equal humans who deserve to be safe.<br><br>Kalenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248563203417205286.post-90858916593476950692015-07-03T06:26:00.000-07:002015-07-07T18:45:55.717-07:00Abuse & RedemptionOne of the chief pieces of advice we tell abuse victims today is that abusers don't change. This is great advice for abuse victims. If someone is abusing you, sticking around in the hopes they will change is a terrible idea. &nbsp;Of course, it is naive to think that all abuse victims really have the ability to leave - some fear if they leave, they will be murdered or become homeless or leave their children alone with the abuser, and sometimes that can indeed be the consequences, so we should not judge abuse victims who are forced to stay and assume it is always a choice. But generally, if someone is abusing you, and you are able to leave them, you should leave.<br>However the narrative that abusers do not and can not change is simply not true, and it is harmful to abuse victims, in another way, to cement this narrative so forcefully; people who abuse others are making a choice, a choice that may well be compulsive and difficult to resist, but a choice that can be changed. Many people who abuse do not have the reason and empathy necessary to change - but some abusers CAN CHANGE, and they should be pressured to change, we should expect and insist that abusers take responsibility for their choices and not feel helplessly compelled to hurt others.<br>I say this based on personal experience. Now, personal (anecedotal) experience is not in any way scientifically valid for several reasons; one, becausre there are billions of humans and my personal experience involves just two of those humans, which is a pathetically small sample size; two, because my personal experience is obviously heavily biased. So you shouldn't take it as Gospel (well that's an ironic phrase, given the Gospels are made up), and I'm not offering it up as such; it is simply my own limited personal experience which has caused me to question the absolutism of condemning abusers as monsters.<div>I grew up with abusive parents. The abuse didn't fully start, to my recollection, until I was around 11 years old. At this time, my mother lost her damn mind and I became a target, an outlet of her inner turmoil. The abuse ranged from private interrogations in which she would accuse me of thinking terrible things about her that I did not think, that were in fact her own worse fears, to hitting and smothering me. There were times where I feared for, and was in danger of, my life - smothering someone can, after all, kill them, and this was a frequent tactic of hers. In her mind, I think she thought I was out of control and she was calming me down, but in reality, she was losing her temper and physically attacking me, I was resisting, and then she would smother me to feel she had gained total control over me. &nbsp;By gaining control of me, she could feel she was gaining control over her own life - after all, she had given over her life to Motherhood at a young age, so if she could control her children, she could feel in control of her life.&nbsp;</div><div>However, this did not solve her problem, because her real problem was her own out of control irrational emotions and thoughts. She was filled with high levels of anxiety and anger, and in her mind this became self hate, hatred towards others, fear, and paranoia.&nbsp;</div><div>She lashed out at her husband as well. &nbsp;I bore the brunt of the abuse - in fact, when I would hear her getting angry at my younger siblings (I am going to be vague about myself on this blog precisely because stories like this are private - as you can tell from the introduction, there has been some reconcillation in my family for one thing, and I do not wish this to be traced back to my true identity, in part because I fear internet harassers like those who attacked Anita &amp; Zoe as I mentioned on two previous posts) - when I heard her attacking my younger siblings, I would run into their room to deliberately put my own body in the way of the abuse and force her to re-focus her anger on me. &nbsp;She treated my siblings differently, and until recently, some siblings denied the abuse altogether, while others had different experiences with it.</div><div>My father was also abusive, allowing himself to lose his temper and screaming mean things at people or hitting them.</div><div>The physical aspect, aside from the terrifying and dangerous smothering, was never the worse part. As a young teen who desperately needed my parents to prioritize love for me in their lives, the worst thing was feeling like my parents hated me. I became bulimic and self-injured by age 14. &nbsp;It was at this time - a few years later, actually -that I first saw that my mother was not really entirely a monster, because it was at this time that my mother first saw the monster she had become for what it was. &nbsp;When she saw the scars and fresh wounds on my body, she finally stopped seeing me as if I were her enemy and started seeing me as the child in pain that I was. &nbsp;</div><div>No one should injure themselves; at worst it can kill you, at best it is a terrible thing to do to yourself. It hurt me in many ways and I still carry the scars with me. &nbsp;However just as the narrative that abusers can't change is a good thing to say to people but not necessarily true, saying that self-injury can get you attention and help is a terrible thing for people vulnerable to that self-destructive compulsion to hear but it is actually the truth, and it is one reason why people self-injure. &nbsp;Not that I wanted people to know I did it - I hid it for years, terrified people would know I was fucking crazy. but I am sure a part of me also did it because no one would recognize my emotional pain, the self-hate that I had been taught, the real fear for my life that I lived with, the fear most abusive victims feel that someday their abusers will seriously injure or kill them, the fear that I would commit suicide due to my misery and self hatred.&nbsp;</div><div>People often don't recognize emotional injury as a real problem or a real danger. People like to pretend our emtions arent real or dont matter. &nbsp;But that isn't reality; our emotional lives in most ways ARE our life, our quality of life, and if you are miserable in your life, it is a real pain that makes your life genuinely difficult to endure. &nbsp;For me, the worst part of my abuse was how it made me feel about myself. I hurt myself because I turned my anger at my abusers inward. I was angry at myself for doing and saying the things that would cause them to be angry at me. All I wanted was for my parents to love me.</div><div><br></div><div>So when my parents found out that I hurt myself like that, they put me in therapy, and they started really looking at their own behavior and trying to change it.</div><div><br></div><div>The abuse did not stop altogether. The abusive behaviors still have not completely stopped. My parents still have that terrible combination of selfish choices and mental illness that cause them to fight with other people and be mean to loved ones for really bad reasons.</div><div><br></div><div>But my parents are not monsters. &nbsp;They behaved as monsters for a time, and sometimes they still do. But they are people, complex people capable of empathy and capable of change.</div><div><br></div><div>My mother fought herself from that moment on, she started trying to force herself to become a bettter person. The monster fought back. Sometimes the mother won, sometimes the monster won. And gradually, over time, with medication and therapy and a lot of hard work, the monster started to weaken.</div><div><br></div><div>It took time, and it went back and forth in phases, and she will never be fully cured. I expect someday when she is old and her mind starts to go that it could come back again. But I do not hate her. She is still in my life. Because she fought for me. I forgave her, for no other reason than that she made it clear to me over and over again that she did not want to be a monster anymore, that she was truly remorseful, and she put that emotion into action in her life and maintains vigilance over herself.</div><div><br></div><div>At 18, I left my mother's house (almost) for good - she kept hitting me, and I kept getting up, refusing to fight back, and then I left. I barely spoke to her for many years. This was one of the best things I did for myself and for her. &nbsp;If you are abused, and reading this, and hoping that your abuser can change too, first know that you should not expect that to happen and what you should do is get out as soon as you can and don't look back. &nbsp;The best thing you can do for yourself, and for your abuser, is to walk out and lock the door behind you. &nbsp;Not that your abuser deserves anything from you, but the only way they will learn to stop abusing you is if they truly lose you, especially lose control over you. They need to know that trying to control others is not going to help them control their own out of control emotions and thoughts. They need to understand that people have a right to their own lives and are not tools for the abuser to use. They need to see that when you hurt people like that, you will lose them forever.</div><div><br></div><div>Unfortunately, this was not the last time I would be under my mother's control. &nbsp;In my late 20s, I was at risk of homelessness. With few options, I returned to my parent's house.</div><div><br></div><div>But this time, things were different. &nbsp;I would have slept under a bridge first if I didn't feel they would be different. Which is not to say things were perfect. There were still fights. My parents still do not know how to control their anger. But the anger now is limited to real problems, not imaginary ones, and there are now limits and accountability where before there were no holds barred. &nbsp;There is also a lot of love and support where before there was primarily abuse. We are all adults, and what happens is not abuse, it is fighting - which isn't great, but there is a difference between an adult raising her voice to another to say "I am mad and this is why" and an adult telling a child that the child is worthless, or smothering the child. &nbsp;If you seperated their behavior today from the past, you would not call it an abusive relationship, you would just say they had bad tempers and could be assholes sometimes; and in all honestly, after enduring that terrible dynamic, I could now be the shit-starter and finisher myself, and there were times when I imitated the abuse towards them and they took it. I'm deeply ashamed of that, and did my best to control it and get my shit together, and it has never played out with anyone else, but the truth is that when you grow up in an abusive dynamic like that one thing that can happen is that you can learn to imitate that behavior. The point is, even at my worst, my parents now showed a new restraint. They learned and changed, something I once thought impossible.&nbsp;</div><div>I have learned and changed as well. I am stronger now, I am peaceful, I control my anger and keep my mental health under control with treatment.</div><div>I still need boundaries with my parents, and none of us are perfect or ever will be, but we can now really spend time together in a loving way. I have forgiven them for the past because they have truly shown remorse and self-improvement. I have my parents back and my family now feels like a normal, loving, fun family. That is precious to me. While I would never tell an abuse victim to hold out for that hope, the reality is that redemption and forgiveness can happen, and did in my life, and I am happy to have my parents back. &amp; I only have that because they truly made the choice to change and put the hard work in. We can and should demand that from anyone with a history of abusing others, because it is their duty and within their power. I am grateful to my parents for being the rare ones to do what they needed to do to be better people, and help me be a better person.</div>Kalenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248563203417205286.post-11293781464400669672015-07-02T16:55:00.001-07:002015-07-02T17:27:08.130-07:00Sure, Harassment is Bad, but Anita Sarkeesian is an Evil Sith Cunt-Lord
Who Must Die!'Just like in real life, women online often face a disproportionate amount of violent, often sexualized anger from men just for being women, particularly for being women with rational opinions like "women should be treated equally". This harassment has gotten so out of control that the mainstream media is starting to take notice. And just like the bigots of today always do, the HaterGate mob is flooding the comments of videos and articles to say that they do not personally support harassment, but harassment isn't really a problem, and also that bitch had it coming. Almost every video or article about harassment has comments from men attacking one woman in particular; Anita Sarkeesian. She has been threatened with death, driven from her home after her address was published online with a death threat, threatened with rape countless times, with multiple images of violence against her, even a "game" where haters punch her face.<div>&amp; what horrible thing did Anita do to merit all this hate?&nbsp;</div><div>She made a few YouTube videos on her channel, Feminist Frequency</div><div>Yea that's it.</div><div>Here are some of the truly terrible things she has said that deserve death:</div><div>"Objectification and sexual violence are neither normal or inevitable. We do not have to accept them as some sort of necessary cultural backdrop in our media...the patriarchy has not existed throughout all time...in all cultures...it can be changed...when we see fictional universes challenging or even transcending systemic gender oppression, it subverts the dominant paragdym within our collective consciousness, and helps make a more just society feel possible, tangible, and within reach." - "Women as Background Decoration Part 2: Tropes vs. Women in Video Games"</div><div><br></div><div>"We are asking for games to acknowledge that [women] exist and we love games... We've been playing games our whole lives."</div><div>"Do you believe that women should have equal rights to men and that we should fight for those rights? - Great, then you're a feminist." - Colbert Report</div><div><br></div><div>"Stop using violence against women as a way to further the storyline of a male hero, and start writing us as full and complete human beings. Okay?" - Women in Refrigerators vid (a response to a female comic book writer, Gail Simone's, similar observations).</div><div><br></div><div>"[women are] full and complete human beings with our own troubles, interests, and creative endeavors" - Manic Pixie Dream Girls Trope vid</div><div><br></div><div>"Instead of believing that [female] sexuality is something to be explored and celebrated, we are repeatedly told that our only form of social power." - "The Evil Demon Seductress</div><div><br></div><div>Ooooh, the horror!&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>Clearly this vile harpy is LYING, because sexism in media can't possibly exist, right fellas?! It's not as if women are over half the population but roughly 12% of leading roles on film (I mean, unless you count actual data and facts, but that logic shit is for feminazis). clearly the only possible way to respond to a woman saying such terrible things as "I think things are not equal and I would like them to be equal" is to make her fear for her life and talk about how you want to violently rape her, right guys?!</div><div><br></div><div>Or you could just, you know, ...not watch her videos. maybe create a response. Maybe even listen to her and treat women like equal humans.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Links:</div><div>http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/research.html</div><div><br></div><div>http://feministfrequency.com</div><div><br></div><div>http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/16/technology/gamergate-women-video-game-threats-anita-sarkeesian.html?_r=0</div><div><br></div><div>http://lby3.com/wir/ - Women in Refridgerators&nbsp;</div>Kalenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248563203417205286.post-31853565435771977012015-06-30T22:33:00.001-07:002015-07-01T20:22:02.019-07:00Zoe Quinn is Not Your PropertyA lot has been written, from the New York Times to Cracked, on the hate mob known as GamerGate. I was personally harassed by them, in a particularly transphobic, racist, and rape-culture-embracing manner myself, and no I do not need to offer "proofs" of this, the proof of HaterGate harassment is all a matter of public record that is easily accessible and blatantly obviously. What I want to talk about lies at the heart of the cornerstone of HaterGate and other such anti-woman hate mobs, the desire of men to control women.<br /><div>Zoe Quinn - the "patient zero" who was the first victim of this injustice, a really awesomely brave woman - Zoe's relationship was her private business, as any woman's romantic and sexual life is. Women have every right to control their own bodies however they please, because a woman's body belongs to that woman and to her alone, her life is hers to live and no one else's to own or control. Her stalker ex-boyfriend couldn't handle that idea, and found a bunch of men who also couldn't handle it to help him try to regain control of her through harassment, using the Internet as their tool and conducting all their business very publicly. What he did is well documented, and no amount of HaterGate lies can erase all that evidence, Quinn has since had to make several police reports in the face of violent, often sexualized threats against her, all because she allegedly chose to have romantic and sexual encounters with people who weren't Eron Gjoni.</div><div>Eron did not and does not own Zoe Quinn. No man does. Women own themselves. So if Zoe chooses to not spend time with him? too fucking bad, man! move the fuck on with your life! You are not entitled to her time, and if you are willing to make her suffer like this you definitely don't deserve it!</div><div>The relentless harassment, anger, and violence towards women like Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian - whose "crime" was asking for less sexism in video games - is the reaction of men raised in a male supremacist culture, in what we all hope and demand will be the twilight of that oppression. They were kept separated from women, beaten into a stereotyped male role, promised supremacy, hidden from the realities of sexism, and they are bewildered and angry that women - who grew up experiencing sexism, being told that girls can't do this or that, being hit on by old men by age 12, and so on - these boyish men expected to keep their male privilege and are seeing women stand up and demand equality, and their reaction is rage. But you can't turn back the clock, boys. Women have a vote, women have money, women will not surrender power, women will have equality. Women will not be your play toys or your slaves. Women will be themselves for themselves and have nothing to do with you, women will be your equals, women will be your bosses.</div><div>And that's really the heart of this problem. Zoe was punished by the hate mob for being an independent woman, who made her own games, who dated who she wanted to, who speaks her mind. And all the hate against her hurt her but it didn't stop her, and others will rise up and have her back because that's how sisterhood fucking works, shitlords.&nbsp;</div><div>Seriously, in my last relationship, my partner was dating a woman besides me, and you know what I said? Awesome! I like the lady she was dating and all three of us are still friends. I'm not saying don't be monogamous if that's your thing, but I honestly cannot understand the idea that what someone does with their own body when you aren't around is any of your fucking business. And if someone dumps you, I sure as shit don't understand why you can't just fucking accept that they have a right to their own life and let them go live it. &nbsp;If someone isn't happy around you, you should WANT them to leave. Why would you ever want to be around someone who doesn't want to be with you?!</div><div>look, love and break-ups hurt and all, but you need to be a man and respect a woman for what she is - a person who is equal to you and doesn't belong to you. Women own themselves. A woman's life is hers to live.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you want to support Zoe Quinn's work, check out her game, Depression Quest:&nbsp;http://www.depressionquest.com</div>Kalenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248563203417205286.post-19716901130149792132015-06-29T20:19:00.001-07:002015-07-01T09:00:16.033-07:00How Workaholics Flipped the Gay Panic ScriptWhen you are a comedy fan, you learn to let your principles slide a lot for the sake of the lulz. Because hey, joke-me-ups aren't really the best place for, like, ethics and shit. You roll with the punches, even when they are punching down, and your only regret is how redundant, thus boring, thus significantly less funny, the old lazy tropes can become. That's why when a joke rolls along that not only innovates, but does so in a way that brilliantly critiques the old, bad jokes, and actually is a joke that makes you laugh, you really laugh your fucking balls (and/or ovaries) off.<br /><div>Thàt's how I felt recently catching up on Season 5 of Workaholics, when I saw the episode "Gayborhood", wherein the Dudes flip the classic "Bros Confront Gay Panic!" Trope right on its' ass and fuck it, hard (but not without love).&nbsp;</div><div>As a gay person, I'm generally ready to be the butt of jokes, to get that butt fucked by homophobic-ass jokes. I'm so used to it that, like your mom, I'm not really surprised or even offended, just kinda disappointed. I was actually really excited to see the cast play out a gay panic scenario and it never even occurred to me to ask for more. But they gave me more. Much, much more.&nbsp;</div><div>Spoilers ahoy, by-the-by.</div><div>The episode takes a turn when the Dudes decide to embrace their perceived accidental three-way-gay orgy and remain close friends - really close friends, with benefits, totes comfortable putting their hetero balls in each other's hetero faces to transcend literal and metaphorical obstacles. They flipped the gay panic script by making a joke of how comfortable they could be with each other's bodies imitating gay sexual positions - way funnier than Cliched fear of gayness (or of reading a blog explaining jokes to you, at least). This is how comedy really transcends - and it proves that you don't need to rely on bigotry to crack people up. &amp; for that I gotta give my main dawgs mad props, as they might say. Well done, Sirs.&nbsp;</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-HKFJYlCCsyE/VZIMoDADvSI/AAAAAAAAAAs/BbuymWsuBIk/s640/blogger-image--218734844.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-HKFJYlCCsyE/VZIMoDADvSI/AAAAAAAAAAs/BbuymWsuBIk/s640/blogger-image--218734844.jpg" /></a></div>Kalenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248563203417205286.post-72048156907926132362015-06-20T10:49:00.000-07:002015-06-29T20:58:11.065-07:00Open Letter to Dylann Roof<div><p style="margin: 0px;">I wanted to start this blog under more positive circumstances, but as is often the case, I am driven to write not by joy but by desperate grief and rage; after the massacre in Charleston this week, I had to express myself, the truth as I understand it, to do my part to peacefully resist the lies of violent hatred.</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;Having read the apparent manifesto by the admitted murderer, I wanted to respond to the destructive, delusional beliefs that he had that helped drive him to kill good people. &nbsp;</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">But before I do that, I want to talk about the victims and survivors of this injustice. &nbsp;Too often, when a young white man kills a group of strangers, people wring their hands over the killer, yet when an innocent, unarmed black child is killed by a police officer, his entire family is insulted. So I want to make it clear I am not writing this from that state of mind. &nbsp;</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">But Why address the killer at all? &nbsp;Why talk to or about him? &nbsp;Because he did not act alone. &nbsp;He acted based on a long tradition of racism, in a place where the flag of segregation and slavery flies high. He says himself that he was taught white supremacy in school, taught so much about how superior white people are that their whiteness wasnt even mentioned, and so little about black people that the few times they were mentioned it was in a tokenized way, until his world view was such that he believed all good things in life came from white people, which is not the least little bit unusual in America and many other places. He was encouraged by adults who knowingly misled this under-educated, willfully ignorant youth and fueled his hate. He was given a weapon by his parents. He had friends who listened uncritically to his racist jokes and took pictures of him expressing his racism, he was able to purchase symbols of his racism to wear publicly. So I write to him because I hope, perhaps wrongly, that maybe, just maybe, if enough of us speak out, our words can reach men like him before they hurt good people for no good reason. Because it is not the burden of black people to change their lives according to what white people demand, to become perfect slaves to white people, to beg white people to not murder them, it is up to white people to fix the problem of white racism.</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;The killer did not see the men and women he killed as people, and they were indeed people, people who welcomed him and anyone else to sit and pray with them, whose warmth shone through the killer's hate long enough to give him pause even if he was too far gone to be saved at that time. &nbsp;I am not personally a religious person, I should mention; I don't base my assessment their virtue on their beliefs, but on their actions in their lives, and that church was a place of peace, love, and justice, no matter how many times that petty white men with hate in their hearts attacked that church, it still stands strong. &nbsp;</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">A few words about who the victims were is not enough to tell you what was lost, and is not as rich as you will see on other sources (ie http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/06/victims-charleston-shooting); the news is still raw, hopefully soon you will see more of their stories in the news. Their loved ones describe them all as sweet, gentle, even heroic people.</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">Tywanza Sanders was only 26 years old and a committed student who worked at a barber shop and played music. When Roof turned his gun on Tywanza's 87 year old grandmother, Tywanza bravely offered his own life, begging the killer to kill him instead of his grandmother, diving in front of her and another woman to use his own body as a shield. The pitiless killer coldly shot them all anyway. Sanders was also an activist in supporting the #BlackLivesMatter campaign after the murder of Eric Garner.</p><p style="margin: 0px;">(I feel compelled to pause and point out the difference between this young black man who went to church and worked and made music went to school and was kind and quiet and ultimately a hero at that age, and the unemployed unschooled white man who did no good in the world and murdered innocent older women and men in a church, and how the racist stereotypes are so clearly false in this comparison.)</p><p style="margin: 0px;">Susie Jackson was Sanders' 87 year old grandmother, the type of woman who took in homeless neighbors in need with no place to go.</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">Ethel Lee Lance, 70, Susie's cousin, was also a grandmother and had worked at the church for 30 years, known as the "heart of [her] family" who could be depended upon "for anything".</p><p style="margin: 0px;">Sharonda Coleman-Singleton was a 45 year old mother of three children, a coach, and a reverend.</p><p style="margin: 0px;">Reverend Clementa Pinckney was a 41 year old state senator and pastor of the church.</p><p style="margin: 0px;">Cynthia Hurd, 54, had worked as a local librarian for 31 years.</p><p style="margin: 0px;">Myra Thompson, 59, was a mother and her husband was also a reverend.</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">Rev. Depayne Middleton-Doctor was described as a "songbird", and was a mother to four girls.</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">Rev. Daniel J. Simmons was a war veteran, a father, and a frat brother whose family said "Although he died at the hands of hate, he lived in the hands of love."</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">Three other intended victims were also at the church and survived, among them a five year old child.</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">We can help the survivors by donating (http://www.charleston-sc.gov/index.aspx?NID=1330) or simply sending some words of support; by recommitting ourselves to actively, peacefully oppose racism and violence on a regular basis in our lives, by voting and educating ourselves and speaking out and volunteering and so on.</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;If any of the survivors happen to read this, I want to tell them that my heart aches for them in their loss, the loss of the most valuable thing, a living person you love, which can never be returned, and I humbly admire their courage and dignity in the face of such true evil. &nbsp;I can hardly imagine forgiving someone who killed someone I love, yet many of the families openly stated forgiveness and mercy to the face of this killer only two days afterwards. That church, and those families, rest on an unbreakable foundation of wisdom, love, and strength, and after this day I will always admire and love and revere Mother Emanuel for that, and answer the call when you need me.</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">I would also like to say that Roof's family are NOT the victims here, as the racist (havng been previously disciplined for using the N word in a court room to a black man's face) judge stated. No one shot Roof's family or their loved ones. Dylann is alive and his parents are the ones who provided him with weaponry and maybe with some of that hate. I do not mean to say they are not suffering, I certainly hope they feel sadness for the grieving families of the people their son killed, (and I know reports stated his sister was about to be married, and I can't help but wonder if he was trying to hurt her by picking this time to all but destroy his own life by killing innocent people), but the killer's family are not victims of a murderer, the victims are the ones who are dead or whose family members are dead.</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;also want note that while we watch black people, even children in their beds, like Aiyana Stanley Jones, are murdered by police with impunity, an armed killer of nine people at a church was captured alive and is even protected by a bulletproof vest whle in police custody.</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">The first thing that I want to say to Dylann Roof is this: I hope you already know how your deluded goals have failed. &nbsp;You wanted to reaffirm White Supremacy. What you did, instead, was show the world another example of how white supremacy is a terrible thing. &nbsp;From your action, the exact opposite of what you wanted has resulted. Even racist white people with hate in their hearts cannot look at a young man shooting up a room full of elderly women and think that white supremacy is the solution to this problem.</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">I want to tell you personally that as a white person assigned female, your killing black women is not in my fucking defense. I support my black sisters against actual rape and murder that white men systematically committed against them, and I condemn your use of the issue of rape as an excuse to kill women, particularly when you have no concept of the difference between rape and consent, when you have no respect for women's right to control their own bodies, when you see women as your property to own or despise of, how dare you add an extra layer of evil and stupidity to your terrible crime and invoke the spectre of rape when you are a white man committing murder against women of color?!</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">In your manifesto (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/20/dylann-roof-manifesto-charleston-shooting_n_7627788.html), you revealed your ignorance and hate, but you revealed other things as well. &nbsp;You called black people violent, but not one black person has personally committed violence against you, and you killed peaceful black people who welcomed you into their peaceful church and who pleaded for their lives and then forgave you. You showed us all an example of WHITE violence, as an extension of systematic white violence.</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">You also showed a basic lack of understanding of really simple science, namely, that humans are all of the same species, and what a species is, and what the scientific method is and how we know we can trust actual scientific results above racist assumptions on random blogs. &nbsp;In the manifesto, you compared humans of different races mating to donkeys and mules mating. &nbsp;This is not the same thing, because unlike those animals that are different species but close enough to mate, all humans of all races are the exact same species. Scientists - hundreds of thousands, at least, of people who went to school for a lot longer than you, Dylann, have even been alive to achieve, who have studied human beings for longer than you have been alive, have long since concluded that humans are all one species. Your guesswork about how black skin somehow has an influence on the brain was once commonly believed and used as an excuse for slavery and other atrocities, and the very reason people turned away from those assumptions is because they educated themselves.&nbsp;</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">Hopefully in prison you will have some access to basic science books and you can see for yourself why most people do not base serious life decisions (like whether or not to throw your entire life away for an opportunity to kill good people) on mere assumptions, but actually do things like literally examine brains and conduct unbiased tests before reaching conclusions. If there was some dramatic difference in human brains based on skin tone, scientists would be able to see it. &nbsp;And considering how recently, say, oh let's just be lazy and go with the Nazis, were in power, there is no basis to believe that some authority has held back this research. But even if there were some reason, like actual real evidence, to believe that some evil Jewish conspiracy kept back all the scientific research about how black people's brains are so naturally evil that white boys should probably go shoot elderly black women praying in a church, you still have no reason or right to believe that it is true if you don't actually have any real scientific evidence of it.</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">Stepping away from the 2nd person address to Dylann, which has become a cumbersome pretense, I want to explain how simple critical thinking and research failings were a huge part of his problem that allowed his own biases and desire to feel superior to others to lead him down a destructive and irrational path; according to his own words, he began his research into the Trayvonne Martin case at Wikipedia, which can be helpful but can also be edited by anyone and does not measure up to, say, the work of skilled journalists applying the scientific method to their writing; from there he went in search, via googling "black on white crime", of a source that would conform to his already present biases. &nbsp;Upon finding that source, a hate group on file with the SPLC, he completely ignored other possible sources like, say, the FBI crime statistics that would have showed him that white people like himself did actually too frequently run around murdering innocent people, that most murder is intraracial, meaning most whites are murdered by other whites, and other actual facts. &nbsp;I could easily convince an ignorant person, against common knowledge and data, that most murderers are truly blonde women by presenting them with a long list of blonde woman murderers, but that wouldn't actually be empiracle proof of anything, particularly given that most murderers are actually men, not women.&nbsp;</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">Part of the problem is that Roof did not WANT to know the actual TRUTH. He wanted to feel superior to black people. Unable or unwilling to accomplish much of anything of value in his own life, he wanted to feel superior to others simply by virtue of his own skin tone, and also to blame an entire race of people for his own problems. &nbsp;</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">He goes on and on about how violent black people are while planning to murder black people who had never committed violent acts in their own lives. &nbsp;He talks about how black people are truly the racist ones while stating that whites are naturally superior and endorsing white oppression of black people. &nbsp;This is known as projection.</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">Before committing violence against a group of mostly women, he accused black people of raping "our" women. &nbsp;He saw white women as the property of white men. &nbsp;In fact, he didn't see women as having any ability or right to choose consensual relationships for themselves, as he calls white women who are in interracial relationships "victims". &nbsp;To him, "rape" is about a man having any sort of sexual or perhaps not even sexual but just romantic, even just friendly, contact with a woman that he, Roof, does not want the other man to have. &nbsp;He apparently has no concept of what rape really is, what consent is, that women are actually equal people, just as he doesn't seem to understand what violence is and doesn't consider blacks to be actual people. &nbsp;Part of his manifesto is saying that slavery wasnt so bad because not all slave owners whipped their slaves - as if that makes it OK to literally own someone and make them work for you for free. Did he not understand that slaves were slaves under the threat of violence, that is, of being murdered if they walked away? Does he see ANY people as actual people, besides himself?</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">He also expresses resentment that white people of today are held to some responsibility for the way white people in this country have historically behaved; because to his logic, only those who actually owned slaves should pay for slavery. But white people like Roof still benefit from their whiteness, which is why no one calls Roof a thug in the media and blasts his family, why he is still alive after shooting up a church, while black VICTIMS &nbsp;of homicide are attacked as thugs and blamed for their own murders when they literally did not break any laws or do anything wrong; Tamir Rice was only a child playing in a park, for example. Myriad studies -remember that science thing I was talking about earlier? - and real hard data show the effects of racism; how identical resumes will end up with the job going to a white person, how cops are more likely to arrest black people for the same crime, and so on. (ie http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1870408,00.html). Racist attitudes are so hard-wired and ingrained in our brains that even black children still think black dolls are uglier than white dolls, that even white people committed to anti-racism make split-second calculations that associate negative words with black faces. &nbsp;Roof saw the truth of this and spoke of it in his crappy, rushed-off little manifesto, but in the face of this evidence he simply shut his eyes, dug in his heels, and recommitted himself to his hatred. &nbsp;To some degree his ignorance was a choice, and it is a choice people make every day, to ignore reality and to commit to ideas that have no basis in reality because they maybe like how they feel.</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">Believing something that may not be true is not always necessarily a terrible thing in the same way, of course; the faith that the people in that church felt was clearly beneficial to their lives, and while they believe it is true, they really don't have any hard scientific evidence of that belief. &nbsp;But that belief did not cause them to harm themselves or others, instead it fueled them to be even better people. &nbsp;So I do not mean to say that false belief alone is the problem here. &nbsp;The larger problem is hate, blind hate and anger, and violence.</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;Roof's commitment to feeling superior, to feeling hatred did not benefit him in any way. He lost his freedom and will almost definitely (if he were not a white man I would be more confident in saying definitely) be in prison for the rest of his life, where he is unlikely to be able to enjoy simple pleasures like getting an icre cream on a beach or deeper needs like having a fulfilling career, falling in love, starting a family. &nbsp;The people he killed had worked hard for their lives, at school, work, for their families, in their faith.&nbsp;</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">Ultimately what Dylann Roof did makes no sense in his life or in any larger context of his own goals and ideals. &nbsp;He hoped to be a hero to white supremacists, but he will live out his days in prison watching a nation that I have FAITH - and I also believe I see good evidence - will continue to grow to become wiser and more compassionate, as people integrate more, oppose racism more. Perhaps some evil people will admire him, but most people will despise him, and only very saintly people will forgive him. There will be no "waking up" to a need for a return to White Supremacy. I believe, and hope, that ship has sailed; even as we still suffer under the effects of white supremacy and must continue to resist it, the reality seems to be that the future will belong to Equality. &nbsp;I believe that and I will do everything in my power to make it so. &nbsp;That is what people are truly waking up and seeing.</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;">If Roof wanted to change the world, he could have done so many things; he could have truly educated himself properly, gotten involved politically, voted, volunteered, donated money, marched - hopefully on the right side of things, for peace and equality. He could have sat in that prayer meeting and listened and learned something. &nbsp;Even if he still was a racist his entire life, even if he chose to pursue white supremacy, he still could have been a better person and had a better life than that of the lowest of the low, the man who murders good and innocent people for no good reason and not even to any personal or idealogical gain. &nbsp;HIs life, at only 21, is a waste because of this decision that he can never be free from - except maybe in his own mind, in repentance. That has been the hope of the survivors. And I, too, hope for redemption - maybe not for this one man, but for our entire world. I hope for a world where people can live together in peace. We can make it happen. It is fully within our ability. We just have to want it - all of us.</p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px;"><br></p><div style="font-family: Times;"></div></div>Kalenoreply@blogger.com0